Houdini Resources

Updated on June 26  2024


Convergence

Deborah R. Fowler


Rubik's Cube Convergence

Posted June 29  2021

keywords: rubik's cube, python scripts (ffmpeg to make avi, handbrake to convert to mp4), motion blur

Created in Houdini 18.5.532 LC on Friday. Rendered over the weekend. Similar to the reverse animation in the Rubik's Cube Mosaic, this is an example of an animation rendered in reverse. In fact, this time it is two simulations run, one in reverse. In this case I used a timewarp to reverse the motion and edit the overall timing.



View on vimeo or https://youtu.be/irepMzIHokw

There are different types of motion blur and settings must be adjusted in the mantra node. In addition you can use velocity blur where the selection of the object must be determined in the geo container node. Here velocity was not used and xform/geo samples were set to 3/2 respectively.
Below are a couple of frames that are motion blurred - they go by fast, but without motion blur your animations could look more like stop motion (like many things in vfx, if you do it right, people won't notice - a good thing as you don't want to break the illusion).



Again python scripts and ffmpeg (example file on my ffmpeg page) were used to create the mp4.