Month: February 2025

Design a detailed machine model with complex mechanical structures and realistic material textures. Use Nuke for compositing to seamlessly integrate CG elements into live-action footage, matching lighting, color, and depth of field. Create a high-quality CG composite film with visually stunning sci-fi or industrial-style shots.

• 220125-Matchmove task

Remove lens distortion using LensDistortion (Undistort), track the 3D camera with CameraTracker, and generate a PointCloud. Add 3D objects like Card and Sphere in Scene1, align them using TrackingCone and Axis, and render the final 2D image with ScanlineRender.

• 290125-Clean up_QT ＆ Roto

Use Roto and Blur to add masks and blur specific areas, optimizing image details. Apply Copy and Premult for alpha channel operations to ensure proper element layering, making the composition more natural and enhancing the integration of CG with live-action footage.

• 060225-CG Machine Moodboard

Referencing the mechanical form of Warhammer 40K’s Dreadnought, design heavy armor, powerful weaponry, and intricate mechanical structures.

Recording the learning process of the Houdini course series, including software fundamentals, procedural modeling, VFX creation, and node-based workflows. Organizing notes, practicing with case studies, and summarizing key techniques and insights to enhance understanding and application of Houdini.

02-03-2025

Grassroots Procedural Modeling

Create a grid and scatter some points on it. Use the N attribute to control the orientation of the lines copied to the points.

Create two attributes:

• pscale (a float attribute)
• benddir (a vector attribute)

Create a sphere and add animation. Set up object collisions to interact with the grass, simulating the effect of grass being flattened, with natural bending and elastic recovery.

The sphere’s position should not be too low—slightly above the grid. Its size should not be too large to avoid errors during collision calculations.

Use polywire to convert the spline into polygons. Extract pscale from curveu, then invert the curveu values by subtracting them from 1. Finally, apply the modified pscale to polywire.

Rain object collision

In Houdini, use the pop network to create a particle system that simulates raindrops. Set attributes like particle speed, size, and lifespan to ensure the raindrops fall naturally. Adjust gravity, wind, and other physical parameters to optimize the raindrop motion. Import a static mesh and enable the pop collision node to make the raindrops collide realistically with the mesh. By tweaking bounce, stick, or slide collision behaviors, ensure the interaction between the raindrops and the surface follows real-world physics, enhancing the overall realism and detail of the effect.

Vine Procedural Modeling

Issue log: While entering code, I encountered a problem where the Attribute Wrangle didn’t work. After thorough checking, I found that it was due to issues with the capitalization of attributes. Therefore, it’s important to note that if the Wrangle node doesn’t show any errors, you should check for attribute and spelling issues.