Tutorial: Creating Sci-Fi Electrical FX in Houdini
The Gnomon Workshop has released Creating Sci-Fi Electrical FX in Houdini, a guide to efficient visual effects workflows, recorded by Squeeze Animation Studios’ María Barbadillo.
The intermediate-level workshop provides over three hours of video training in Houdini.
Create professional VFX in Houdini by working smarter, not harder
In the step-by-step tutorial, Barbadillo sets out how to create professional-quality effects in Houdini, building an entire scene from scratch.
The workflow makes use of procedural modeling, simple simulations, and small animations, demonstrating that complex, heavy simulations are not necessary to create effective VFX.
Barbadillo also showcases shading and lighting techniques to enhance the effects created, and demonstrates how to optimize render times when using Houdini’s Karma renderer.
She concludes by exploring how to create a pre-comp to visualize all of the elements, and sets out the basic principles of compositing to improve the result by adjusting render layers.
As well as the tutorial videos, viewers of the workshop can download supporting project files, including the full 3D scene.
The workshop makes use of Angelo Ferretti’s free Sci-Fi Scene and Madzersolo’s free Floating Spherical Robot 3D model, and uses open-source software Natron for compositing.
About the artist
María Barbadillo is Lead FX Artist at Squeeze Animation Studios, overseeing projects including an unreleased feature, and Clash of Clans cinematics.
She previously contributed to Paw Patrol 2 at Mikros Animation, Tadeo Jones 3 at Lightbox Animation Studios, and films including Thor: Ragnarok and Deadpool 2 at Framestore Montreal.
Pricing and availability
Creating Sci-Fi Electrical FX in Houdini is available via a subscription to The Gnomon Workshop, which provides access to over 300 tutorials.
Subscriptions cost $57/month or $499/year. Free trials are available.
Read more about Creating Sci-Fi Electrical FX in Houdini on The Gnomon Workshop’s website
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