VSFX 350: Resources

Deborah R. Fowler

Resources for VSFX 350 Procedural Modeling and Animation

Posted 2013
Updated on Sept 10 2023

click here for Houdini Information

click here for Houdini Tips and Tricks Examples

click here for Submission Guidelines and Rules

click here for Expectations

Assignments are available online only.

Please review these notes regularly during the course of this quarter.

Due Dates (link to google calendar)

Weight	Requirements			Reviews/Dailies	Deadlines (by class number)	Optional	Grading	Templates
10	Exercises				listed in Class Notes below
20	Project 1	out 2	image 3		due 8 (Procedural Introduction - Building)	9	PGR 1	BreakdownP1
30	Project 2	out 1	image 7	review daily layout 11	due 13 (Procedural Modeling - Complex Scene)	15	PGR 2	BreakdownP2
30	Project 3	out 13	image 14	review mechanics 17	due 19 (Procedural Animation - Expressions)	20	PGR 3	BreakdownP3
10	Professionalism

In keeping with creating a studio environment you will be expected to adhere to deadlines and show your work in progress in a "dailies" fashion.

If you have questions, let me know. I am always happy to give you feedback to help you improve your work but you have other projects/exercises to complete within this quarter. Improvement and deadlines are part of the studio process. The "orange box" class dates above indicate assignments allowing optional final renders.

Reminder: You are always encouraged to refine your work, however at some point deadlines require you to put it aside. You will not be re-graded for work submitted after deadlines but it will still count toward your participation grade. Improving your work is important but so is being able to work within the deadlines.

NOTE ABOUT OPTIONAL FINAL RENDERS

As per the submission guidelines please submit the files in a folder labeled Quarter_Class_PN_LastnameFirstname_Title_Final (contents as before).
***Please leave the original submission in the dropbox***

This folder should be on the top level of your dropbox. This allows me to see at a glance, who has submitted a "Final" Version.

Class Notes

LECTURE OVERVIEW

In-class Exercises	Approximate Class	Deadlines (by class number)
In-class Phyllotaxis	2,3	4
In-class Blue Box	4,5	not required to hand in
In-class Orange	6	6

Class 1-20 please refer to the syllabus located on blackboard

On the SideFX website you will find a link to the Houdini documentation here.

There are examples on the tips and tricks page - these are small sample files that resolve questions I have been asked repeatedly and hopefully will act as a more informal documentation. If you would like more explanation I will be happy to answer questions, as always ask questions!

Key words: phyllotaxis, math review, logic review, look dev, instancing, layout, dynamics, rbd, particles, chops

Student Responsibility reminders:

review expectations and brief overview
when an exercise or project is assigned, read over the description
keeping up with assigned homework is expected - it is part of acting professionally
check your slack daily

In-Class - Phyllotaxis Hints (required exercise)

To help with this exercise I made a short video which you may find helpful. Spheres are placed in a circle according to the equation of a circle.
To help understand parameter use in Houdini there is a short powerpoint here

In addition, you should review the material here. For fun (optional reading below):

Other interesting sites related to the beauty of nature and mathematics are here and here.
If you are interested in Fractals see Mandelbulbs.(There are forum posts about this topic as well)
Also or those of you interested in Cactii, this is from Siggraph 92 - a collision based model of phyllotaxis

In-Class - Table Hints (no longer required exercise)

For extra hints on how to use the font node here are three example files font.hipnc, fontRunTogether.hipnc and fontAlternative.hipnc (use this last one only if you have coding experience - if you like this format take a look at Hscript examples on the tips and tricks page).

More Hints:

Keep in mind there must be a complete condition on each side of the logical operators && (representing and) || (representing or) . ie. if ( $F > 4 && $F < 10 , 1, 0 )
Order matters - see two behaviors that change based on order of conditions ExamplesOfSwitchIf.hipnc
Nested if statements are valid (that is to say your true or false condition may be an entire if statement). However in Exercise 2 one thing that may make it easier if you do not like nesting if statements is to have the true condition to be the word ie. "Kermit" and the false to be an empty string "".
You may also use the more "C like" version of an if statement, an example is in fontdemo.hipnc
Also color hint fontColorHints.hipnc

Project 1 - Building Hints

You will be creating a procedural system for generating the exterior of a building. I recorded a more recent video of my lecture that can be found on vimeo. The Internet provides numerous examples of procedural buildings and city generation. Pascal Mueller , et al. at https://www.esri.com/en-us/arcgis/products/arcgis-cityengine/overview should serve as inspiration for this exercise. Interesting video related to the Building exercise (done in maya with mel) on procedural buildings here.
We will look at previous students work in class.

in addition to postPlace.hipnc also look at sampleWindow.hipnc, sampleDepthWindows.hipnc, orientToCircle.hipnc and finally tubeWindowCopy.hipnc, all on the Tips and Tricks page

Project 2 - Complex Scene Hints

Project 3 - Procedural Animation Inspiration