Sci – Fi Growth – Houdini & Nuke VFX Course

Creating the Geometry

In this course we will be creating a mechanical sci-fi reveal from start to finish

We will create all the geometry inside Houdini, using various procedural techniques and some non-procedural methods as well. 

We will also talk about the best methods to create UV’s and clean up the mesh so we can apply subdivisions at render time.

Designing FX

The main driver of this growth effects will be generated with particles. We will various vex functions such as volumesample, quaternions, cross products and also talk about how to set up timers to have complete control over the particles.

For the final reveal, we will use a very simple propagation set-up that doesn’t rely on overly-complicated solvers, which also offers a lot of freedom and control over the transition.

Rendering

In the rendering section, we will be using Redshift to create all the passes. We will set up all the materials with the textures that you’ve been provided with, and then take a look at creating custom AOV’s and exporting different attributes and textures as separate passes. 

Also we will be creating a very simple volumetric pass to add a bit of life to the background.

Compositing

In the nuke section we bring everything together. We start by recreating the beauty pass by splitting up all the AOV’s and putting them back together. After we add the custom passes as well, we set up the depth of field effect and add our volumetric effects. 

To help our volumetric pass we will be creating a 3D fog environment directly inside of Nuke with the help of it’s particle system.

Finally we add a few extra effects to complete the final look.

So I hope you will enjoy this course and let’s get started!