I've been playing around with Houdini 20's new APEX feature ever since I tried out the chicken rig that was made with APEX (one of SideFX's APEX demo projects). APEX is very powerful! I was already obsessed with KineFX in Houdini, APEX is like the cherry on top of the ice cream, completing the whole animation job. What I use to try to do in KineFX is now very simple and easy in APEX. Join me in a Live Stream and I'll show you what I've learned and what NOT to do when dealing with APEX. I'll also show you what I've been working on, brushing up some of my zbrush sculpting skills and rigging it in Houdini with KineFX and building Control Rigs using APEX! Then add simulations just because we can!
Read MoreIn this video, I expand on the previous topic and we create intelligent rig controls that reacts to the environment around the rig. This automates a portion of the animation and makes life so much more easier when it comes to animation. This video demonstrates a simple example of a Campass Rig, but I'm hoping this will inspire you to think of different ideas for other rigs to make more complex animations!
Read MoreWe get to create some more advanced Custom Controls for our rigs in Houdini. We'll use another rig to control our character rig. Imagine the possibilities of this technique! We'll be able to use so many different ways of creating animations. Imagine adding procedural animation on top of all this! It can only get more awesome from here on!
Read MoreWhat is Procedural Animation? What makesWhat is Procedural Animation? What makes an animation procedural? In this video, I explore some of the basics that makes an animation procedural and demonstrate how the sine wave can easily bring a character to life through animation! an animation procedural? In this video, I explore some of the basics that makes an animation procedural and demonstrate how the sine wave can easily bring a character to life!
Read MoreI use a new character that I've made to show case how to setup the animate and setup the IK Controls utilizing all the Basic Concept videos up until now in this Kine-FX mini-series for Houdini! There's a lot of new tips and tricks within this video that are only available in this video, that will help you rig & animate characters in Houdini using Kine-FX!
Read Morewe'll explore how the Full Body IK node in Houdini is used for quick character animations for long chains of rigged bones. This workflow is especially useful for animating with tails, fingers, ropes, tentacles, or anything that has a long chain of bones.
Read MoreI go over another technique you can use for Rig Posing with Houdini's KineFX system. By Layering the Full Body IK nodes and organize the rig poses into groups, it will make our Character Posing tasks a lot more efficient. Non-destructive rig posing! We can take this to a new level and tackle some more complex character poses that involves more limbs and requires more adjustments.
Read MoreI demonstrate how we can use what has been taught up until now with Houdini's Kine-FX techniques and character rig posing to create a scene where the Octopus grabs onto a balloon. The Kine-FX is combined with some tricks in the viewport and Vellum Simulation to make the wrinkles in the balloon and make our lives easier rather than modeling the wrinkles manually. I hope this will inspire more ideas for future projects of your own!
Read MoreI demonstrate how priority can be added to the IK Control Bones and tell Houdini’s Kine-FX system which bones should be followed more closely than others. This will allow us more control over posing the characters and makes posing much easier!
Read MoreWe start digging deeper into Houdini's Kine-FX world by introducing the IK Full Body node. You're going to love this node! It makes character posing so much easier! And if you use the workflow I suggest in the video, you'll find that you don't need any bone remapping at all!
Read MoreI demonstrate how to Export a Houdini KineFX rig into Blender. The KineFX is made from scratch in Houdini and is attached with retargeted animations. It’s all imported into Blender using FBX format, so it’s compact and clean. You’ll get the fully rig exposed in Blender for further tweaking and animations available in the Action Editor inside the DOPE sheet.
Read MoreUsing Houdini’s voice tools, you can complete the whole Lip Sync process using CHOPS to analyze the audio spectrum in your voice and translate that to your character mesh.
Read MoreI'll be demonstrating how you can use Vellum Skin, a technique to fix overlaping geometry in character animations. Vellum Skin is an easy technique that can be used to procedural overcome the intersecting geometry and improve results without setting manual keyframes on the rig pose node.
Read MoreI demonstrate the basics of Houdini’s Vellum Grains simulation and a step by step demonstration of attraction weight, clustering Vellum Constraints, Crowd Agent setup, and dynamically activating Vellum Grains.
Read MoreCrowds, Ragdolls, Kine FX, RBD Collision! I'm going to build on top of the Kine FX topic and use it to animate the Crowd States in Houdini's Crowd Simulations! I'll be demonstrating how to setup ragdolls and use Crowd Triggers to kickstart the ragdoll state. The most interesting part is probably the RBD collision happening with everything mentioned above!
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