Welcome weary traveller to od[force]’s first ever, annual quick survey.

We appreciate that your time is valuable, so the questions are kept brief, poignant and to the point (and, even better, mostly multiple choice!). We would love it if you could spare some time from your busy schedule to take a look and help direct the future of od[force].

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SIGGRAPH 2009

Click Me! New! Learning Pyro FX at Side Effects!

In this video tutorial series, we will examine the Pyro FX workflow in-depth and the parameters used to create Fire and Smoke effects. We will also examine how volumetric data is created and recorded, and how to visualize it.

Beginning Setup – [45MB QT - 6 Mins.]

This video covers the initial setup of the working file that we will reference throughout this series of lessons.

Initial Tour – [62MB QT - 9 Mins.]

An overview of the various editors and node sub-networks. This video provides a straightforward opportunity to become familiar with navigating the networks.

Visualize Data – [108MB QT - 12.5 Mins.]

An introduction to specific names and data types, and how to visualize them in Houdini.

New Desktop – [76MB QT - 9 Mins.]

In this lesson we will re-configure the Houdini desktop layout to better suit our needs for working with Pyro FX.

Shading Fire – [195MB QT - 31 Mins.]

An introduction to the Pyro shader and a detailed look at the parameters used for shading fire.

Shading Smoke – [74MB QT - 14 Mins.]

Drawing on the knowledge gained in the previous lesson we will continue to explore the Pyro shader and the parameters used to shade smoke.

Scattering – [235MB QT - 35 Mins.]

Scattering is used by the Pyro shader to simulate the diffusion of light created by fire within a smoke cloud. Scattering is the next logical step after tweaking the look of fire and smoke since we then have the opportunity to compare renders without and with scattering.

Voxels – [174MB QT - 22.5 Mins.]

We step away from Pyro FX to consider the fundamentals of volumetric data, how it is generated and recorded in Houdini.

Pyro Node – [194MB QT - 29 Mins.]

This lesson focuses on the Pyro node and examines how data is initially created, what types of data are created, and how it is managed. We reference our previous example of voxels.

Lowres and Upres – [128MB QT - 20 Mins.]

In this concluding lesson we will cover the transition of the lowres simulation data to highres form. We will also cover what type of data needs to be generated, saved, and rendered – including shadow maps, scattered pointclouds, and dynamic data.