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Mix 04 /  by Xuan Prada

Hello patrons,

First video of 2022 will be a mix of topics.

The first part of the video will be dedicated to talk about face building and face tracking in Nuke. Using these tools and techniques will allow us to generate 3D heads and faces using only a few photos with the help of AI. Once we have the 3D model, we should be able to track and matchmove a shot to do a full head replacement or to extend/enhance some facial features.

In the second part of the video I will show you a technique that I used while working on Happt Feet to generate foot prints and foot trails. A pretty neat technique that relies on transferring information between surfaces instead of going full on with complex simulations.

This is a 3.30 hours video, so grab yourself a cup of coffee and enjoy!
All the information on my Patreon channel.

As always, thanks for your support!

Xuan.

Scan based materials on a budget /  by Xuan Prada

Hello patrons,

Last post of the year!

In this two and half hours video I will show you my workflow to create smart materials based on photogrammetry. A technique wideky used in VFX and the game industry.

But we won't be using special hardware or very expensive photographic equipment, we are going to be using only a cheap digital camera or even a smartphone.

In this video you will learn:

- How to shoot photogrammetry for material creation.
- How to process photogrammetry in Reality Capture.
- How to bake textures maps from high resolution geometry in Zbrush.
- How to create smart materials in Substance Designer for Substance Painter or for 3D applications.
- How to use photogrammetry based materials in real time engines.

Thanks for your support and see you in 2022!
Stay safe.

Xuan.

Dealing with lidars /  by Xuan Prada

Hello patrons,

We haven't talked that much about lidar scanning, and it is time to say a few words about it. Lidar scans are a fundamental piece of the VFX pipeline, used by every single visual effects studio on the planet and counted by dozens on every film or tv show.

Sooner or later you would have to deal with lidar scans, that's why I have recorded this video, more than 3 hours of professional vfx training about how to use lidars scans.

In this video we will learn:

- What is lidar scanning.
- How we use lidars in VFX.
- How lidar technology works.
- Basics of working on-set with lidars.
- Lidar hardware.
- Lidar software.
- How to process point clouds.
- How to generate meshes for 3D work.

All the information on my Patreon feed.

Thanks!

Xuan.

Deep compositing /  by Xuan Prada

Hello patrons,

In this 2 hour video we are going to be talking about deep compositing workflows.

I will show you how to use deep compositing and why you should be using it for most of your shots.
I will explain the basics behind deep rendering and compositing techniques and also we'll go through all the deep tools available in Nuke while comping some simple shots. From volumes and atmospheric effects to solid assets.

Video and downloadable material will be included in the next posts.
All the information on my Patreon.

Thanks for your support!

Xuan.

Lookdev rig for Houdini /  by Xuan Prada

Hello patrons,

In this video I show you how to create a production ready lookdev rig for Houdini, or what I like to call, a single click render solution for your lookdevs.

It is in a way similar to the one we did for Katana a while ago, but using all the power and flexibility of Houdini's HDA system.

Talking about HDA's, I will be introducing the new features for HDA's that come with Houdini 18.5.633 that I think are really nice, specially for smaller studios that don't have enough resources to build a pipeline around HDA's.

By the end of this video you should be able to build your own lookdev tool and adapt it to the needs of your projects.

We'll be working with the latest versions of Houdini, Arnold and ACES.

As usually, the video starts with some slides where I try to explain why building a lookdev rig is a must before you do any work on your project, don't skip it, I know it is boring but very much needed. Downloadable material will be attached in the next post.

Thank you very much for your support!

Head over to my Patreon feed.

Xuan.

Small dynamic clouds /  by Xuan Prada

Hello,

I don't think I will be able to publish a video this month, let's see, but in the meantime here you can download five caches of small dynamic clouds that I simulated in Houdini.
They are a 1000 frames simulation and should work pretty good to create vast cloudscapes.

They are .bgeo caches, feel free to convert them to .vdb if you want to use them in any other software.


The videos below are flipbooks of the animated clouds, not renders.

The downloadable link will be published in the next post.
This is free of charge for all tiers with downloadable resources.

Thanks,
Xuan.

Mix 03 /  by Xuan Prada

Hello patrons,

This month I have another mix video for you. In this case I'm talking about two different ways of using the camera frustum to optimize your scenes. The first method is using the camera frustum to control the amount of subdivisions, a very common practice when dealing with large terrains that need a lot of displacement detail. We will use Houdini and Arnold, but this technique can be used in any DCC that supports Arnold. Other renderers have similar features.

The second method will use the camera frustum to blast parts of the scene not seeing by the camera. This is a tool that we will build in Houdini and can be used with any render engine.

Then we will move to another important topic in VFX, motion blur. I will show you how to use it properly to achieve photo realism. Motion blur should be taken very siriously, specially by lighters and FX TD's.

All the information on my Patreon.

Thanks!
Xuan.

Camera projection masterclass, episode 03 /  by Xuan Prada

Hello patrons,

I'm about to post "Camera projection masterclass, episode 03".
In this episode we are going to create a nested projection setup, where the camera is moving from far away at the begining of the shot, to end up closer to the subject by the end of the shot. A very common setup that you will see a lot in matte painting and environment tasks.

Then, we are going to take a look at the concept of overscan for camera projection. I will show you different ways of creating overscan, I will explain why overscan is extremely important for all your camera projection setups, and finally we will do a complex overscan camera projection exercise, using an impossible camera.

Make a big pot of black cofee because this is around 5 hours of professional training divided in two videos. Oh and remember that you can download supporting files if your tier includes downloadable material.

All the info on my patreon feed.

Thanks!
Xuan.

Houdini scatterers 2/2 /  by Xuan Prada

Hello patrons,

This is the second (and last) part of Houdini scatterers. We are going to take the tools that we made in the first video and see how we can use them to create complex and efficient scattering systems for your VFX shots, specially useful when dealing with huge environments.

I will show you some of my favourite worflows and share some techniques that I've used in the past in combination with the HDAs that we created in this series.

For those of you in tiers with downloadable material, you will have access to another post with some links to get the files.

As usual feel free to contact me with questions, suggestions, ideas, etc.
And if you like my content, please help me out and recommend it to you work mates.

All the info on my Patreon feed.

Thanks a lot for your suppor!
Xuan.

Real time rendering for vfx, episode 04 /  by Xuan Prada

Happy New Year!

Real time rendering for vfx episode 04 is here!
This is a long one, around 4 hours split in two different videos, both of them available already for you.

In these two videos I cover a lot of things related with lighting and rendering in Unreal. We will cover all the rendering methods, rasterization, raytracing, hybrid rendering and path tracing.

Some of the topics covered in this video are:

- Rendering methods in Unreal.
- Lightmass.
- Type of lights.
- Volumetric lighting.
- Modulate lighting.
- Global illumination.
- Mesh lights.
- Reflection methods.
- Post processing volumes.
- Particles lighting.
- Blueprints for lighting.
- Light function.
- Core components of a lighting scene.
- Neutral lighting conditions.
- Rasterization.
- Raytracing.
- Hybrid methdos.
- Path tracing.

All the info on my Patreon.

Simple spatial lighting /  by Xuan Prada

Hello patrons,

I'm about to release my new video "Simple spatial lighting". Here is a quick summary of everything we will be covering. The length of this video is about 3 hours.

- Differences between HDRIs and spatial lighting.
- Simple vs complex workflows for spatial lighting.
- Handling ACES in Nuke, Mari and Houdini.
- Dealing with spherical projections.
- Treating HDRIs and practical lights.
- Image based modelling.
- Baking textures in Arnold/Maya.
- Simple look-dev in Houdini/RenderMan.
- Spatial lighting setup in Houdini/RenderMan.
- Slap comp in Nuke.

Thanks,
Xuan.

Head over my Patreon site to access this video and many more.

Houdini scatterers, part 1/2 /  by Xuan Prada

Hello patrons,

This new video is part of the "little project" I made in Houdini and Redshift a while ago. In this part 1 of 2 video I show you how to create efficient tools in Houdini to deal with scattering, specifically focusing on environments. We are going to create a setup that takes care of randomization while using scattering techniques. Random rotation, random scale, random assets, etc.

Once the setups are done we are going to create tools or "digital assets" so you can re-use these tools as many times as you need in future porjects without re-doing the setups. We will create an interactive user interface to manipulate the tools.

In part 2 of this video I will show you different scattering techniques using these tools that we are going to build today.

The video is available on my Patreon site.

Thanks for your support!
Xuan.

Real time rendering for vfx, episode 03 /  by Xuan Prada

Hello patrons,

Real time rendering for vfx episode 03 is here!
In this episode we will spend around two and a half hours inside Unreal talking about textures, materials, shaders and everything related to the material system.

Some of the topics we are going to cover.

- How to work with textures.
- Shading models.
- Using instances and exposing parameters.
- Fresnel effect.
- Emission.
- Transmission.
- Opacity.
- Multi-channel masks.
- Modulate.
- Displacement.
- Vertex shading.

All the information on my Patreon feed.

Thanks again for your support!
Xuan.

Camera projection masterclass, episode 02 /  by Xuan Prada

Hello Patrons,

Camera projection masterclass, episode 02 is here! In this video, we are going to be doing two different exercises involving camera projection work in Nuke. The first exercise is a simple one, but also one you'll be doing all the time, a layering camera projection.

The second exercise is a more complex one, we'll be dealing with multiple geometries, different footage, and different approaches to set up our camera projection setup, this will be a coverage projection exercise.

More than two hours of content, also providing working files for you to practice.

As always, I can't thank you enough for your support.

Questions, suggestions, and critiques are always welcome.

All the info on my Patreon site.

Thanks!
Xuan.

Real time rendering for vfx, episode 02 /  by Xuan Prada

Hello Patrons,

It's been a while since I posted a video here. I did a little bit of traveling (not for fun though) and I've been super busy at work, but I finally managed to put something together for you guys.

Episode 2 of "real-time rendering for VFX". This episode is boring, really boring but also very much needed. If you really want to get into real-time rendering you need to go through everything that I explain in this video. I will cover very important topics that you need to know before starting to create any content for real-time.

Concepts like occlusion, overshading stages, lightmapping, vertex shading, distance culling, rasterization, and many other fancy terms that you necessarily need to understand. This video is almost 5 hours long so I hope you don't fall asleep and learn a few things to put in practice soon.

As usual, please let me know if you have any questions, concerns, suggestions, feedback, etc. And also, thank you very much again for your support.

Right now we are 199 patrons, let's get up to 200 and do something to celebrate it.

All the information on my Patreon site.

Real time rendering for vfx, episode 01 /  by Xuan Prada

Episode 01 for "real time rendering for vfx" is dropping later today. I called this video "your first day in Unreal engine". We will do from scratch a very simple environment that we can scout in virtual reality.

These are some of the topics covered in this (almost) 4 hours video.

- Assets considerations for real time.
- Exporting/importing assets in Maya/Unreal.
- Using templates in Unreal.
- Collisions.
- Materials basics.
- Lighting/atmospherics basics.
- Exporting projects.
- VR scouting.

Please head over my Patreon site and check this out.
Thanks for your support,
Xuan.

Introduction to heightfields /  by Xuan Prada

This is the first part of the "Redshift little project" we are doing to conclude the "Introduction to Redshift for VFX" series. In this case, I will explain to you the basics of Houdini's heightfields. The most common tools, different workflows, how to export attributes, geometry, and textures, how to use real world data, and many more things. In the end, is about three hours of video training that will set you up quickly to start working with heightfields.

The video will be available for subscribers in my Patreon site.
Xuan.

Introduction to Redshift - little project /  by Xuan Prada

My Patreon series “Introduction to Redshift for VFX” is coming to an end. We have already discussed in depth the most basics features like global illumination and sampling. I shared with you my own “cheat sheets” to deal with GI and sampling. We also talked about Redshift lighting tools, built-in atmospheric effects, and cameras. In the third episode we talked about camera mapping, surface shaders, texturing, displacement maps from Mari and Zbrush, how to ingest Substance Painter textures and did a few surfacing exercises.
This should give you a pretty good base to start your projects in Houdini and Redshift, or whatever 3D app you want to use with Redshift.

The next couple of videos about this series are going to be dedicated to doing from scratch to finish a little project using Redshift. We are going to be able to cover more features of the render engine and also discover more broad techniques that hopefully you will find interesting. Let me explain to you what is all of this about.

We’ll be doing this simple shot below from start to finish, it is quite simple and graphic I know, but to get there I’m going to explain to you many things that you are going to be using quite a lot in visual effects shots, more than we actually end up using in the shot.

We are going to start by having a quick introduction to SpeedTree Cinema 8 to see how to create procedural trees. We will create from scratch a few trees that later will be used in Houdini. Once we have all the models ready, we will see how to deal with SpeedTree textures to use them in Redshift in an ACES pipeline.

These trees will be used in Houdini to create re-usable assets llibraries and later converted to Redshift proxies for memory efficiency and scattering, also to be easily picked up by lighting artists when working on shots.

With all these trees we will take a look at how to create procedural scattering systems in Houdini using Redshift proxies. We will create multiple configurations depending on our needs. We are also going to learn how to ingest Quixel Megascans assets, again preparing them to work with ACES and creating an additional asset for our library. We will also re-use the scatterers made for trees to scatter rocks and pebbles.

To scatter all of that will be used as a base Houdini’s height fields. For this particular shot, we are going a very simple ground made with height fields and Megascans, but I’m going to give you a pretty comprehensive introduction to height fields, way more than what you see in the final shot.

Once all the natural assets are created, we’ll be looking at the textures and look-dev of the character. Yes, there is a character in the shot, you don’t see much but hey, this is what happens in VFX all the time. You spend months working on something barely noticeable. We will look into speed texturing and how to use Substance Painter with Redshift.

suit.png

Now that we are dealing with characters, what if I show you how to “guerrilla” deal with motion capture? So you can grab some random motion capture from any source and apply it to your characters. Look at the clip below, nothing better than a character moving to see if the look actually works.

It looks better when moving, doesn’t it? There is no cloth simulation btw, it is a Redshift course, we are not going that far! Not yet.

Any environment work, of course, needs some kind of volumetrics. They create nice lighting effects, give a sense of scale, look good and make terrible render times. We need to know how to deal with different types of volumetrics in Redshift, so I’m going to show you how to create a couple of different atmospherics using Houdini’s volumes. Quite simple but effective.

Finally, we will combine everything together in a shot. I will show you how to organize everything properly using bundles and smart bundles to configure your render passes. We will take a look at how Redshift deals with AOVs, render settings, etc. Finally, we will put everything together in Nuke to output a nice render.

Just to summarize, this is what I’m planning to show you while working on this little project. My guess is that it will take me a couple of sessions to deliver all this video training.

  • Speed Tree introduction and tree creation

  • ACES texture conversion

  • ACES introduction in Houdini and Redshift

  • Creation of tree assets library in Houdini

  • Megascans ingestion

  • Character texturing and look-dev

  • Guerrilla techniques to apply mocap

  • Introduction to Houdini’s height fields

  • Redshift proxies

  • Scattering systems in Houdini

  • Volume creation in Houdini for atmospherics

  • Scene assembly

  • Redshift render settings

  • Compositing

  • Something that I probably forgot

All of this and much more training will be published on my Patreon. Please consider supporting me.

Thanks,
Xuan.