Visualization Students Explore Houdini’s Tools And Benefits During Gamedev Workshop
Students looking to expand their technical skill sets participated in the Houdini Gamedev Workshop, a partnership between SideFX and the Visualization program, on Feb. 9 at the Hildebrand Equine Complex.
Houdini is a software program and digital content creation package made by Toronto developer SideFX. It allows artists and developers to produce digital assets for games, films, television, motion graphics, architecture and medical visualization, according to Christopher Hebert, SideFX senior director of marketing.
“Launched in 1995, Houdini was at first primarily used by large film studios for visual effects. Since then, it has broadened its application into a wide variety of sectors and applications,” Hebert said. “Now it is used by pretty much every major film, TV, advertising and video game studio in the world for functions across the pipeline, including modeling, world building, character FX, rigging and animation, VFX, lighting, layout and rendering.”
Among the benefits in learning how to use Houdini are how to create visual effects from the ground up to animate characters, scenery and worlds, Hebert said.
“No matter what you go in with visualization, Houdini is a very powerful tool to have in your toolkit,” he said. “Having the kinds of tools that Houdini can make gives students that have just the minimum amount of experience or skills in Houdini the chance to really do some amazing things that leapfrogs ahead of someone having to build something from scratch.”
Students chose from three tracks based on their skill set, working in level design and world building, real-time effects, tool building and digital assets.
Aaron Thibault, the School of Performance, Visualization and Fine Arts’ newly hired director for games and esports and an associate professor of practice, said students can use Houdini as a common tool to create and solve problems across all industry fields. He compared Houdini’s influence to word processors when they emerged as an alternative to typewriters.
“With word processors, you could go back into what you wrote and make changes, but with typewriters you used white-out and had to reassemble everything that you did,” Thibault said. “Houdini is a parametric tool set for a workflow that the world needs for modern development. Our students have the opportunity to become part of that new world, to have a better way of thinking about problems and creation, in the entertainment and interactive fields.”
Grace Callanan, a junior Visualization student, hopes to become proficient in animation and rigging to become a generalist in the field. She said she was grateful to expand her skill set at the workshop so that one day she can add “Houdini efficiency” to her resume.
“I found out that SideFX has a really immersive tutorial library, which is great. I plan to go home and watch some of those,” Callanan said. “I definitely just wanted to be more comfortable in Houdini after this workshop. I want to become more comfortable with the interface and just the workflow in general.”
Robert Magee, senior product marketing manager for SideFX, led the introductory workshop where students placed simulated trees in a sandbox through Houdini’s terrain and scattering tools.
Danicka Oglesby, technical artist at SideFX and a Visualization program graduate, conducted the intermediate workshop where students made an explosion simulation as a Houdini-generated effect. Caleb Duane, technical artist at Bluepoint Games and also a Visualization program graduate, was a part of the session for advanced students where they learned to create custom tools in Houdini.
Xray Halperin, a senior technical artist at Insomniac Games, led a session for advanced students that explored tool-building techniques by re-creating a physical object in Houdini. Halperin, who developed procedural tools and techniques for “Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales” video game, showed examples of how he created snow on the New York streets in the game.
Thibault said there is a special relationship between the school and Houdini. The students and faculty understand the power of the tools that SideFX makes, he said, and SideFX understands the capability of the students.
“I couldn’t be happier to have them come all the way here to work with our students,” Thibault said. “I am very glad for our outgoing faculty member André Thomas, who really was the vision to spark this relationship, and I am happy to carry the torch. I also think we have a good balance between technologists and philosophers at our school, and I think we are able to offer something different and special in our department because of that.”
Top photo: Danicka Oglesby, technical artist at SideFX and a Visualization program graduate, conducted the intermediate workshop where students made an explosion simulation as a Houdini-generated effect. (Abbey Santoro/Texas A&M University Division of Marketing and Communications)
