Blog | vfxarabia

Feb 9, 2020
1 min

Houdini Deforming Flip

Well if you are looking for the technique behind Spider Man the water rise monster shot then you are in the right place. I found two ways until now to create this effect one of them "which I used in this setup" is by using the surfacepressure attribute to control the flip based on it's location in the animated model sdf volume, the other method is by using volumegradient vectors which will read the sdf field from the model and keep the particles tight. The result will differ

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Mar 9, 2019
1 min

Houdini Recursive Fracturing (Particle solver Stage 01)

It took me some time to wrap my head around this technique, it's getting pretty complex fast so I broke it into two stages, the first one will hold the core features and the second stage will fine tune things more and add some details and beauty features. Tool's feature: - multi stage voronoi fracture system. - uses particle solver for speed sake so no collision between parts (might create it in a separate tool if you like). - activation is based on the following conditions:

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Sep 2, 2018
2 min

Houdini Combine / Flatten VDBs

I came across two situation that urged me to find a way to combine or let's say flatten vdbs so instead of having multiple densities you will end up with only one, and those situations are: - If you are using the Houdini Cloud Lighting Baker tool I created earlier, so if you have a couple of clouds that you merged and wanna bake the light on to them, only the first one will store the color data. - Another important use of this technique is when you are exporting VDBs to be us

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Aug 3, 2018
1 min

Got Featured in Houdini Customer Reel 2018

لله الحمد من قبل ومن بعد تم ادراج أحد أعمالي ضمن بورتفوليو شركة ال Sidefx لعام 2018 , وهي الشركة الصانعة لبرنامج ال Houdini أحد أقوى البرامج المتخصصة في انتاج المؤثرات البصرية. العمل يشمل جهود فريق كبير وهو ملك لشركة الانتاج يارا ميديا دبي لكن معيار الاختيار كان بناء على عناصر المؤثرات البصرية المنتجة باستخدام هذا البرنامج. المشهد في الدقيقة 1:58 I'm so thankful and proud that all of the effort I put in this (painful to learn) program paid of, at 1:58 you will find my humble

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Jul 28, 2018
1 min

The Cosmic Collection

The collection articulates the beauty and romance of the Moon, Planets and Galaxies first explored and celebrated in the late fifties, creating a beautiful celestial collection. The designs connect a rich and authentic history to current culture and innovation. Discover the collection at asprey.com Director: Ali Walker VFX: Alaa Alnahlawi Client: Asprey UK #Houdini #particles #bigbang #space #cosmos #3dsmax #maya #diamond #brand #ad

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Jul 2, 2018
1 min

Dubai Ramadan Idents 2018

Directed by: Usama Alsharqi VFX: Alaa Alnahlawi Producer: Reem Emad Production House: Yara Media - Dubai Executive Producer: Aws Alsharqi Dubai media incorporated Some breakdowns can be seen here: -https://www.behance.net/gallery/67376405/Dubai-Ramadan-Idents-2018 -https://www.behance.net/gallery/67319045/Dubai-Ramadan-Idents #Dubai #Houdini #sidefx #vfx #fluids #simulation #TV #3d #3dsmax #rendering

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Jun 14, 2018
1 min

Sadeem 2

سديم 2: قليلة هي تلك الفرص التي تتيح لك استخدام خبراتك الفنية لخدمة هدف أكبر من فقط الفن لأجل الفن والمتعة, ولله الحمد حظيت هذا العام بفرصة المشاركة بانتاج برنامج سديم الجزء الثاني وهو برنامج وثائقي تلفزيوني إماراتي يعتبر معلمًا بارزًا من معالم الأفلام الوثائقية العلميّة في المنطقة. طوّر هذا البرنامج بهدف وضع حجر الأساس لعلوم الفضاء في المنطقة. يقدّم البرنامج سعيد القرقاوي، الذي يشغل منصب باحث إستراتيجي في مركز محمد بن راشد للفضاء. A scientific documentary aired on Dubai TV,

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Apr 3, 2018
2 min

Houdini Benchmark Cores vs Clockspeed (updated)

Something that's gonna face every artist building a new rig, which is better a fast cpu or more cores. Well let's find out, I'll focus more on simulation tasks (Pyro,Grain,ocean). This chart is going to be up to date, so I'll really appreciate it if you ran the tests as well and shared your results, I'll list them asap with your name ;) You can download the three test files here. One small favor to ask from you, if you like what you find here and wanna me keep going please do

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Mar 6, 2018
1 min

Houdini River Flip Sim

A more refined and detailed version of a test I created earlier. Sim time: 2h on i9 7940X only for the flip sim, iso surface and white water simulation was calculated on the fly while rendering so you can add another 2h for this. Render (Redshift): 2-5min per frame on 1070&1080 I had to do almost 5-10 tests for both simulation and rendering until I achieved this final result, oh man our specialty needs alot of patience and hardware power. I still have some flickering goin

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Dec 25, 2017
5 min

Houdini To 3Ds Max Workflow (Alembic / VDB)

As most of us newly Houdini converts every now and then we tend to move back to our original software to do rendering whether it was 3ds max C4D etc.... and the most common formats that form this bridge is VDB and Alembic. I mainly use vray for rendering inside of 3ds max so today I'm going to talk specifically about two very useful tools inside of vray that allows you to work with those exported formats, which are "Vray proxy loader" for Alembics and "Vray volume grid" for V

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Dec 22, 2017
2 min

Using 2 GPUs to accelerate Houdini (OpenGL + OpenCL)

Latest update and still Houdini 17 doesnt support multi GPU acceleration specially when it comes to simulation tasks, but there is a trick that we can do to over come this partially. As the title said, you can tell Houdini to use another GPU as an OpenCL accelerator and leave the main one for UI and display. Why it is important? well normally when working with a project and having a couple of programs opened your GPU memory will be half full or lets say a minimum of 2GB will

5,142 views1 comment

$Dr Strange Building RnD (fractals, 3D kaleidoscopes, clone duplication)$

Jul 9, 2017
2 min

Houdini Smoke Color (file included)

NOTE: As of Houdini 17 this technique has changed and made easier, you can find an example here... I spend the last two days searching the internet and cracking my head trying to figure out the best way to add color to smoke inside of Houdini. Sadly it's not as easy as in Fumefx where you just activate color and put a texture but once you master it you can do magic. There are two major way to add color: 1- Creating the color field (the container that will store the colors) an

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Jun 12, 2017
1 min

Houdini Pyro Explosion

This final look went through alot of refinement around 10 versions with alot of tweaks over a span of a week on my way mastering Houdini pyro. It was simmed in Houdini and rendered in 3ds max using vray volume grid. Technical info: -Core explosion: (450,450,450) 91 million voxels -Smoke shockwave: (600,100,600) 36 million voxels -64GB of vdb -Render time (FHD): 30 min per frame on dual 2683v3 -Sim time: 1h with Opencl activated (GTX 1080) Kindest Regards Alaa Al Nahlaw

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May 27, 2017
2 min

Cores vs clockspeed benchmark for Houdini, Vray and Realfow (56 vs 12 vs 48)

Update: For houdini I extended my tests and used multiple setups with the help of the great community of Odforce, the results can be found here. To what degree our 3d packages are multi threaded, is adding a mighty 56 thread machine really worth it. Okay I thought of sharing my experience and results with you guys comparing : 1- i7 6800K 6/12 @ 3.8GHz 2- 2 x E5-2683v3 28/56 @2.5 3- 2 x E5-2696v2 24/48 @ 3.25 (not official xeon version works with overclocking, I will not use i

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Houdini Pyro for Fumefx artists (Object & Normals Velocity)

VFXArabia | The VFX creation of Alaa Alnahlawi (علاء النحلاوي)

Houdini Deforming Flip

Houdini Flag

Houdini Recursive Fracturing (Particle solver Stage 01)

Houdini Pixelizer

Houdini Combine / Flatten VDBs

Got Featured in Houdini Customer Reel 2018

The Cosmic Collection

Dubai Ramadan Idents 2018

Sadeem 2

Houdini Benchmark Cores vs Clockspeed (updated)

Dubai TV Identity 2018

Houdini River Flip Sim

Houdini To 3Ds Max Workflow (Alembic / VDB)

Using 2 GPUs to accelerate Houdini (OpenGL + OpenCL)

Dr Strange Building RnD (fractals, 3D kaleidoscopes, clone duplication)

Houdini Smoke Color (file included)

Houdini Pyro Explosion

How to switch to CPU Opencl

Cores vs clockspeed benchmark for Houdini, Vray and Realfow (56 vs 12 vs 48)

Houdini Pyro for Fumefx artists (Object & Normals Velocity)