Houdini Fx : Creating An Avalanche Rig

Learn all the steps needed to setup a High resolution Avalanche VFX rig in Houdini and create a final comp.!

What you'll learn
We will cover all the steps needed to create a high resolution Avalanche simulation down the side of a mountain.
We will review a trick to turn a still image into a moving sequence for use as our Background and discuss parallax and why it is important.
We will use grains and meshing to create the mass bulk of our setup and regular particles for additional FX elements.
We will use the sparse solving method to create parts of the Avalanche Simulation.
We will cover setting up render layers and using Redshift to render out our passes.
Mantra versions of the shaders will be supplied for students without access to Redshift.
We will create a final comp using Natron, or you can use Nuke if you like.
Requirements
You should have some experience with Houdini before starting this course. This is not a course for total beginners.
A recent release of Houdini(18+) with Sparse solving tools. You can still use the old (dense) method if you wish
A powerful enough computer to run Houdini and a good internet connection for 1080HD streaming.
This course will be using Houdini 18.5.499 on a windows 10 based system throughout the videos.
Description
Hello Houdini Artists.! This course will show you all the steps involved in setting up an Avalanche FX rig.There are over 5 hours of lecture videos going over the process of creating this setup.You should have working knowledge of Houdini before enrolling in this course. If you have done my previous Houdini course “Master Houdini FX”, you will have all the Houdini basics needed to be able to follow this course with ease.This course is “Fast paced”, which means I will not be explaining every function of every node I use on screen. I will explain what is necessary, but basic nodes will not be explained in detail, this is to try keeping this total course time to a minimum and to not bore those that have a working knowledge of Houdini's core functions and nodes.All lectures will have Houdini hip files for you to download and any other necessary assets. There are two sets of files for students to download. Files for those rendering in Redshift, and files for those rendering in default Mantra. The rendered output of the Redshift render will not be exact to the Mantra output since they are different engines using different shaders and lighting, but they will be pretty close.If you have any questions, please feel free to ask. I encourage you to watch the intro video and watch some of the “free” videos so you can get a sense of what the course is like.This course will be using Houdini 18.5.499. If you have any version of Houdini that has sparse solving, then you should have no problems following along with the lecture videos. You can still do the entire course if using an earlier version(as long as it has grains), you would just have to use the dense solver for our snow powder sim.Here is the basic breakdown of the course:We will start by examining the still image I used to create a "2.5D" scene for us to create our Avalanche Effect in.We will discuss what parallax is and why it is important and how to "fake it" to create what looks like moving footage from any still image.We will show how to use grains to create a large volume of particles that stick together like a body of snow moving down a mountain side.We will see how to do many tricks to add additional FX elements like small particles flying up from the leading edge and use sparse solving to create volumetric snow powder.We will see how to create 3D geometry from a textured plane to generate Tree collision geometry.I will show you a trick to get the volumetric snow powder to trigger emission of particles to act as a wind force.We will then go into rendering and I will show how to create all the renders necessary for a full comp.We will be using Redshift in the course and on screen, however you can use Mantra if you do not have the Redshift Plugin. There will be scene files for you to download that are setup for Redshift shaders, and another set of scene files that are for rendering with Mantra shaders.Once all the renders are done, we will assemble a full comp using Natron, or you can use Nuke if you have access to it. I will be presenting a very straight forward and approach to creating an FX shot like this. We will break it down into smaller sims and go through it step by step progressively building new sims from previous sims until we are done with the shot. If you have been using Houdini for a little while, you should have no problems following this course. If you need a refresher or are just starting to use Houdini, I recommend doing my first Houdini course “Master Houdini FX” as a primer to this course.

Overview

Section 1: General Overview of the scene setup

Lecture 1 Introduction to the course

Lecture 2 What is Parallax…?

Lecture 3 Preparing the Background Image

Lecture 4 Shader setup Overview

Lecture 5 Note on where to find the initial file download

Lecture 6 Scene layout Overview

Section 2: Creating Our Simulation Rigs

Lecture 7 Setting up the Source Points

Lecture 8 Setting up the Grains - Part 1

Lecture 9 Setting up the Grains - Part 2

Lecture 10 Setting up the Grains - Part 3

Lecture 11 Creating leading edge particles

Lecture 12 Isolating the Grains Edge - part 1

Lecture 13 Isolating the Grains Edge - part 2

Lecture 14 Snow powder setup - Part 1

Lecture 15 Snow powder setup - Part 2

Lecture 16 Snow powder setup - Part 3

Lecture 17 Adding tree snow

Section 3: Setting up our Render nodes

Lecture 18 Meshing the Grains

Lecture 19 Setting up the Lights

Lecture 20 Render geometry nodes - Part 1

Lecture 21 Render geometry nodes - Part 2

Lecture 22 Redshift shader review

Lecture 23 Note about the BG render sequence available for download

Lecture 24 Rendering the Background

Lecture 25 Rendering the Dynamics

Lecture 26 Rendering the shadow pass

Lecture 27 Creating our comp

Section 4: Wrapping up the course

Lecture 28 Course wrap up

Anyone interested in seeing to create a Large scale Avalanche VFX shot inside Houdini from an FX artist with 20+ years experience in post production.,Aspiring FX artists and current working professionals looking to learn new skills or see another approach to rig creation.