Mix 06 - Houdini baking tools and Blender camera projections /  by Xuan Prada

Hello patrons,

This is one of those mix videos that I do once in a while.
We are going to explore two different topics.
The first one is new baking methods in Houdini 21, for both mesh and textures. Pretty useful for assets and environment work.

The second is all about camera projections in Blender. This is an introduction, because I'm planning to do a nice little project on this Patreon that involves a combination of camera projection techniques, matte painting and ComfyUI workflows. Hopefully I can ge into this pretty soon.

As a reminder, please get in touch with me to propose topics for my next videos.
Head over to my Patreon to access the training

Thanks,
Xuan.

Houdini biomes /  by Xuan Prada

Hello everyone,

This is the last post of the year.
I wanted to talk a little bit about Houdini biomes and a proper workflow for USD and Solaris.
Biomes are a very centric SOPs set of tools and I wanted first to explain how to use the tools and then what is the workflow that I'm using when it comes to export the scattering data to be used with USD published assets.

Head over to my Patreon to access the training.

Gaussian splatting with open source software /  by Xuan Prada

Hello,

This is a video that I made after getting a message from one of you. I'm doing a lot of gaussian splatting work, but I don't use open source software, I use commercial tools.
But, the message was about an alternative pipeline using free and open source tools, so I made this video to showcase the process. With some hiccups, but at the end I made it work.

I wouldn't use this workflow for my commercial work, as I believe there are commercial applications that do a better job, but it you are curious and want to get into gaussian splatting, maybe this is helpful for you.

Head over to my Patreon to access the training.

Thanks,
Xuan.

DIY camera tracking /  by Xuan Prada

Hello patrons,

In this video I propose a different unorthodox way of camera tracking your shots, aimed at independent productions and personal projects.
Instead of relaying on the usual tracking programs we take a look and photogrammetry software, open source projects and custom scripts to automatically camera track different shots.

Let me know what you think and if this approach could be useful for your own projects.

Head over to my Patreon to access the training.

Thanks,
Xuan.

Houdini rigging 01 /  by Xuan Prada

Hello patrons,

This video is about rigging in Houdini.

I will cover most of the features that I've been using for the past 4 years to create characters in Houdini.

We will build a rig using Kinefx from scratch. Then we will look into how to use any motion capture data from any rig and retarget it to our own custom rig.

We will then take a look at making modifications or fixes to the animation, mixing multiple mocap clips, and adding extra layers as props or cloth simulation.

This is the first part of an introductory rig series, where we will be covering other rig concepts in the future.

Head over my Patreon to access the training.

Thanks,
Xuan.

ComfyUI segmentation /  by Xuan Prada

This is a ComfyUI workflow that allows you to do different types of segmentation for VFX shots.

I will explain a few things when it comes to using ComfyUI for VFX, specifically when it comes to green/blue screens, background removals and rotoscoping.
Not perfect by any means, but hopefully useful for your productions in one way or another.

Head over to my Patreon to access the training.

Thanks,
Xuan.

Grooming 03 /  by Xuan Prada

Hello,

This is grooming 03, I'll be talking mostly about lookdev and rendering hair in Solaris and Karma. We will build a hair layering shader that we can use with animals and creatures, something that is very common when working with complex VFX assets.

I'll be taking some time off starting next week, so I'll be seeing you after the summer break.

Head over to my Patreon to get access to the training.
Thanks,
Xuan.

Houdini Solaris - sequence lighting /  by Xuan Prada

Hello,

In this video we are going to create a template in Houdini Solaris for handling multi shots, or sequence lighting.
This is the type of setup that allows you to drive an entire sequence from the same Houdini script, being able to create overrides per shot.

This is a very common practice in visual effects and animation studios.
In this video we will work with Solaris, Karma and USD.

Head over to my Patreon to access to the training.
Thanks,
Xuan.

Skin lookdev in Houdini Solaris Karma /  by Xuan Prada

Hello,

In this video we are going to look into how to deal with skin shading in Houdini's Solaris and Karma. Unfortunately Karma doesn't have the best skin shader out there, but we will try to extract the best out of it to create realistic skin shaders.

There are a lot of things to cover, including.
- How to use vfaces as source textures.
- How to wrap your custom meshes to generic vfaces meshes using Houdini's topo transfer.
- How to transfer vfaces to your custom meshes using Houdini and Mari.
- How to create a callibrated lightrig for lookdev.
- How to use and callibrate properly multi channel displacement maps.
- How to use ISO masks to control different areas of the face.
- How to deal with roughness and specular.
- How to use albedos and SSS maps.
- Peach fuzz.
- How to create AOVs for extra control in Nuke.

All the info on my Patreon.

Megascans modules to full procedural buildings /  by Xuan Prada

 

Hello patrons,

In this video we will create a setup in Houdini to generate full procedural buildings using Megascan modules.
You can tweak this setup in any way you want to create a different style of buildings, either using other Megascan modules or your own 3D models.

At some point I would like to replicate this setup 100% inside of Unreal using PCG, this is something that I explain briefly in the video as well and it would be part of the Unreal PCG series that I started a while back.

All the info on my Patreon.

Thanks,
Xuan.

Grooming 02 /  by Xuan Prada

Hello Patrons,

I don't think I'll be able to publish anything next month, so I'm leaving this video this month (as well as the first video).

This is the second part of my grooming series (more to come) where we expand the knowledge and workflows explained in the first video.

This time we talk about cartoon female grooming, and we will spend quite a bit of time developing full procedural grooms. I will expand on this topic in the next grooming video, there are still plenty of things to cover.

All the info on my Patreon.

Thanks for your support!
Xuan.

Grooming 01 /  by Xuan Prada

Hello patrons,

This is the first video of my grooming in Houdini series.
The video is a bit longer than I anticipated, 4:46 hours, but we need to start by covering the very basics of grooming before doing any real grooming work.

This is what I will be covering in the video.

- Grooming workflow in Houdini.
- Grooming tools.
- Cartoon style grooming.
- Full grooming of one character.
- Overview of grooming of another character.

In future videos I will be covering many more grooming related topics, I explain the whole plan in the introduction of this video.

All the info on my Patreon.

Stay tunned.
Thanks!
Xuan.

Solaris backplates and live compositing /  by Xuan Prada

Hello,

I'm planning to realease two more videos before the end of the year, and most lilkely I will stop posting on this Patreon in 2025 let's see.

For now, this is the first video that I'm releasing in December.
Solaris backplates and live compositing. Houdini has re-designed COPs and now you can do much more without leaving the software when it comes to compositing, specially for slap comps.

We will take a look at the new tools and we will do a simple slap comp similar to the ones we do in production.

All the info on my Patreon.

Crowds part 03 /  by Xuan Prada

Hello Patrons,

This is the final video for my Crowds series.
In this video we are going to talk about using ragdolls in crowds systems.

Of course, there are many other topics that we could discuss when it comes to crowds, but for now, let's end this series here. Please let me know if you would like to see more crowds content in the future. Otherwise, please feel free to suggest other topics as well.

Al the info on my Patreon.

Thanks!

Crowds part 02 /  by Xuan Prada

Hello Patrons,

As promised, this is the second part of the crowds series.
In this very long video, almost 3.30 hours, I will cover creating agents from scratch. We will start by building the rigs bone by bone. Then retargetting mocap from different sources, creating collision layers, etc, and finally creating the crowd simulations.

We will be adding cloth and hair layers for simulation.
This is a more advanced crowd setup, so I encourage you to take a look at the first video.

I will conclude this series with Crowds part 03 - ragdolls, hopefully next month.

Thanks!
Xuan.

Crowds part 01 /  by Xuan Prada

Hello Patrons,

This is the first of two parts of my Houdini crowds training.
The first video is an introduction to the system. I will cover everything from agent creation, motion capture clips, props attachment, configuring contraints for feet contact, transition clips, and rendering in Solaris with Karma.

I will also explain in the video what are the plans for the second video, which will be a bit more advanced and it will touch on some important topics not covered in the first video.

I hope you like it.
Head to my Patreon to get all of this.

Thanks,
Xuan.

Blender camera tracking /  by Xuan Prada

Is blender good enough for camera tracking?
Let's find out in this long video (almost 4hours).

I'm going to try to solve different camera tracks, starting with the most basic and simple exercise to understand how Blender works when it comes to camera tracking.
We will also look into more complex shots, recreating different 3D cameras for different types of shots.
After that we will also look into 2D tracking and planar tracking to solve other types of VFX shots.

We are also going to look into camera projections and compositing inside of Blender, nothing too fancy tho, everything in the context of camera tracking.

Overall a good introduction to camera tracking in Blender, and hopefully some valuable information that you can use in your own projects.

All the info on my Patreon.

Thanks!
Xuan.