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Unlocking the Magic of Houdini

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CINEMATICS IN UNREAL ENGINE
This workshop is your ultimate beginners guide to Houdini. We'll start with the fundamentals, exploring terminology and UI to understand the software. Then, we'll dive into project-based explorations of procedural modeling, particle simulation, destruction, pyro and liquid simulations, vellum soft body, cloth and hair simulation, character rigging, animation, and crowd simulation.
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$449

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Hi, my name is

Jordan Allen

Jordan Allen is a member of Corridor Digital where he uses Houdini to bring his ideas to life everyday. He is a self taught VFX artist, dropping out of Chapman film school after realizing his time spent in classes that didn’t align with his goals, could instead be invested in teaching himself online; an education that has never stopped.

TOPICS COVERED IN THIS WORKSHOP

HDAs
Rendering
game-ready procedural assets
Procedural modeling
Real-Time Destruction
Advanced Shader Setups
Modular Pipe Generation
Reverse Engineering
advanced vEX
solaris
advanced tools and workflow setups
karma rendering
procedural workflows
FX TD Setups
studio pipeline
Rigid Body Destruction
Smoke/Pyro
Flip Fluids
Vellum
KineFX
Crowds
animation
destruction
procedural modeling
cloth and hair simulation
Industry Level VFX Pipelines
VFX Concepting
Asset & Tool Creation
Cinematic VFX
Gameplay VFX
Advanced Niagara Systems
Iterative Workflows
AAA Quality VFX Practices
Houdini Procedural Asset Workflows
Instant Access to
the Workshop
Learn at Your
Own Pace
Lifetime Access
& Free Updates
Mentoring with
Industry Experts
Join a Global
Community
doublejump skill System

What we will learn together in

24 Weeks

WEEK 1

Intro and Setup

What we will cover:

It’s time to build from the ground up! This week will be dedicated to installation of Houdini, along with some helpful (and free) 3rd party tools, and of course, getting familiar with the UI of Houdini!

There is so much to explore here so let's take our time getting comfortable in our new home.

WEEK 2

Scripting Language and Concepts

What we will cover:

This week is dedicated to wrestling with important terms and concepts inside of Houdini.

If you have no experience in coding, like me when I started, these videos will help you make sense of a lot of the things we will be doing down the line and serve as a resource you can always pop back to later on to refresh your memory!

WEEK 3

Modeling- Building a Shed

What we will cover:

It’s time to get our hands dirty!

This week we will be focusing on some basic modeling, exploring both the manual, and procedural approaches to building a shed from the ground up!

WEEK 4

Modeling- Building, Animating, and Creating UV's for Our Little Ghost

What we will cover:

It’s time to continue our modeling journey by building our first character, looking at the various ways we can achieve an organic final result, and ironically bringing our ghost to life in the process.

We will also be looking at UV’s, what they are, why they matter, and how we can make them for our geometry!

WEEK 5

Modeling- Intro to Solaris

What we will cover:

A final scene and animation is nothing if you can’t render it, so we will be exploring Solaris and the Karma renderer!

This section is all things lighting, materials, cameras and action.

WEEK 6

Particles- Creating Snow

What we will cover:

Our first foray into the world of simulation!

We will unpack what simulation is, how it works and begin by exploring the most basic of the simulation branches in Houdini, particles, by creating a snow simulation for our scene.

WEEK 7

Particles- Creating Rain

What we will cover:

Using the information we have already digested we will re-approach our scene, this time creating a rain effect with proper dynamics and splashing!

This is a shorter week and as such is a great opportunity to catch up if you need it!

WEEK 8

Baby Thanos Snap

What we will cover:

In our last week of this section we remove a man from the face of the earth with the baby thanos snap!

It will introduce us to a whole host of new and exciting concepts, including Houdini’s new “Copernicus” texture creation tools, and will serve as an excellent final exam for the concepts we have learned to this point!

MODULE 2

8 weeks

Rigid Body Destruction

Smoke/Pyro

Flip Fluids

More details coming soon*

MODULE 3

8 weeks

Vellum

KineFX

Crowds

More details coming soon*
doublejump skill System

What we will learn together in

6 weeks.

WEEK 1

Learning the Game - Project Brief, Concepts and Quick VFX Production Wins

What we will cover:

This week we will dive into the Project brief where you will get a synopsis of the Lore for the game we are making. You will be given a list of VFX that the Game Director is tasking you with to create this epic moment. Then you will be guided through theproduction Pipeline to make sure you stay on track with your tasks to move through thisproduction in an efficient and effective way to deliver high-end AAA level effects.

You will then start tackling some Character and Prop VFX for our Rune Embers and Character Glow to get some quick, early wins under your belt to boost morale as you move forward into the thick of production. We will also explore the power of our Level Sequences for looping animations and keeping our effects active after we return togameplay from our cinematics.

WEEK 2

Figuring out the Good Stuff - Establishing VFX Pipelines through the R&DProcess

What we will cover:

This week is all about getting into the Research and Development process for creating some of our more complex VFX Assets.

We want to explore and tackle the technical methods we need for creating our VFX to make sure we have a clear path forward. We will dive into Houdini and set up our pipeline for fracturing, animating and exporting our Activation Crystal for Unreal.

We will also explore using Point Cache Data from Houdini to Niagara for spawning our Dark Energy Tendrils to our fracture animation. We will create a Material Function to handle our Disintegration FX across multiple materials used by our character and explore how we can control it through a global set of parameters.

Then we will wrap up the week by establishing another Houdini Pipeline formore advanced VFX mesh creation. We will use techniques to make beautiful twisting helix like meshes that can be influenced through the use of Vertex Color information in our Unreal Materials.

WEEK 3

Becoming a Master Craftsman - Creating Master Assets for Iterative andEfficient VFX

What we will cover:

This week has a simple and clear goal. We will create Master VFX assets that can be reused, iterated on, or instanced across multiple VFX. We will do this by thinking through what assets will have multiple use cases for reusable textures, materials, meshes and Niagara Systems.

We will tackle pyro simulations and texture packing methods for getting more frames into our flip books while still maintaining a good level of fidelity.

We will build textures for our portal beams and lens flares and finish by creatinga Master Material that will be used across a vast majority of our VFX.

WEEK 4

Powering Up - Diving into Our Prop and Character Based Gameplay andCinematic VFX

What we will cover:

Now it’s time to dive deeper into our Level Sequences, Gameplay Logic and Cinematics.

We will focus more on creating with Art Direction in mind to build out VFX that adhere to a cohesive style and design. This is where we will start employing ourworkflow strategies for using our Master Assets to iterate quickly.

We will dive deeperinto Niagara to spawn ribbons that emanate from our prop and attach to our character as he animates during the cinematic. We will also use our Vertex Color on our Xmeshes we created in Houdini to randomize a single mesh.

We will also employ strategies for attaching mesh FX and particles to specific character bones while sampling specific regions on a characters mesh.

Then we will finish up our gameplay ability that we created through our Character’s Animation Montage to activate our stairsand build out an infinite looping system we can use to add some extra detail to our level intro looping effects with controls to integrate them into our Houdini Animation.

Of course we will also be very heavily involved in our Blueprint logic and Level Sequences.

WEEK 5

Power of the Portal - Use Advanced Niagara Systems and VFX Techniquesto Complete our Portal Cinematic

What we will cover:

In week 5 we will focus healy on our Activator Beam, Portal Beam and EnergyImpact / Kick Off effects.

We will build out the systems and FX for all of our Portal assets. We will dive into composition for our Portal Beam and Activator Beam Impact FX and explore ways to build out directionality into them that will maintain the illusion of depth, randomness and avoid repetition.

We will tackle different ways to use dynamic beams for diversification of effect types and round out the week with the additional creation of our Dispersion Tether effects through a more bespoke creation approach in Houdini.

This will address needing additional assets in production and how we can still maintain consistent art direction when we need to add to our library.

We will focus on exporting the right assets from Unreal to Houdini to maintain proper composition and balance forour new mesh creation.

WEEK 6

Shut it Down! - Finish the Final Cinematic VFX with Our CharacterDisintegration, Soul Travel and Complete Portal Shutdown

What we will cover:

THIS. IS. IT.

Time to finish it all up and shut it down.

We will round out our DisintegrationFX for our character by adding particles to be absorbed into the Portal Beam that are emitted directly from our characters emissive materials.

We will balance our animation timing, expose material and Niagara parameters for greater control in sequencer, and build out the deactivation systems needed to fully shutdown our Portal after our Character’s soul has reached its destination to begin the journey for this game’s story.

Our focus will be on working quickly and efficiently through reusing and iterating on our Master Assets so we can cross the finish line and ship this game on time.

We will go through a final balance pass and discuss some optimization techniques we can use to help our FX stay optimized and performant.
Reviews

Connect with a Global
Community of VFX Artists

I have worked with Urban in the Past on a workshop and with Corbin as FX supervisor during my time at ILP. They are both extremely creative, passionate and always put helping the people around them up to the for front. I couldn't imagine a better team of people to put together a school like DoubleJump. Always people and education first.

JURI BRYAN

Head of CG & Simulation MPC Adelaide

"DoubleJump Academy has an amazing amount of free workshops and high-end videos which we recommend for any Visual FX artists. And if you are a beginner, this needs to be the first resource to break into the CGI industry!"

Eddie Chew

Owner & Creative Director
Griffin Animation Studios

"William goes in depth into his workflow and approach he takes to creating large scale environments, u get to understand his thinking behind the why he does things not just the how. There is some comp tricks taught along the way in nuke as well that have been helpful to apply to my own projects to elevate them just that bit more even if environments Isn't my main focus. Of course as well the huge community of DoubleJump is a bonus always ready to help when u need it with a bunch of friendly folks."

Sam Savage

Fx Artist/TD - Enrolled in: Epic Environments for Movies

SHELDON SCHWARTZ

This was done under - Unreal Engine Complete Automotive Masterclass

"Learning VFX can be a daunting task, especially when you’re not sure what sources and practices you can rely on and follow. Urban is a master of his craft and delivers high-end, quality content that you can trust to keep you on track in your professional development. I have greatly benefitted and grown as an artist from his invaluable industry knowledge, that often times can’t be found anywhere else. If you want to learn how to produce industry quality effects at the highest level you won’t want to miss anything from of Urban Bradesko."

Jesse Henning

Senior VFX Artist at Atomic Arcade

"Having worked with Urban for many years. I can strongly recommend engaging with DoubleJump. This team covers a wide range of skill-sets combined with their wide array of contacts in the Visual Effects Industry. They are striving to create a hub for beginners to experts alike. Equally strengthening various Studios toolsets and team members. In DoubleJump I entrust!"

Hudson Martins

CG Supervisor at Axis Studios

Luca Goury

This was done under - Unreal Engine Complete Automotive Masterclass
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