I was previously a medical photographer for many years. Istarted using Zbrush to make images of stuff that was difficult/impossible tophotograph (antibodies, viruses and cells). I sold the still renders throughthe Science Photo Library in London.
A few years ago, after visiting a video production companyin Leeds, I decided to learn how to animate myscientific models. Like yourself, I started trying to learn animation withModo. My first few short films on Youtube were done with Modo.
However, when SideFX launched Houdini Indie, I felt that Ihad to try it – so many dynamics tools, at a reasonable price. I have beenteaching myself to animate with it for around 2 years.
In regard to learning Houdini, I have found the followinguseful:
- Youtube tutorials by Jeff Wagner and Ari Danesh – really knowledgeable blokes.
- Pluralsight’s Houdini paid tutorials.
- Tokeru’s pages on the CGWiki site: [http://www.tokeru.com/cgwiki/?title=Houdini](http://www.tokeru.com/cgwiki/?title=Houdini)
- The video tutorials on the SideFX webpage.
There aren’t many books on Houdini (just 2 really old booksrelating to Houdini version 9). I really wish that the brilliant people atSideFX would publish some new books to teach people how to use Houdini forreal-world animation and FX projects.
Knowing which tools to use to achieve a given effect is halfthe battle. Understanding the parameters in the nodes is the other half. I findmyself reading books on animation and FX for Maya, just to get ideas about howto approach animating a given subject (e.g using deformers or dynamics tools),then look for equivalent tools within Houdini.
There aren’t many video tutorials on specifically animatingscientific subjects in Houdini. Scientific tutorials that I have encounteredhave mostly been for Maya & C4D.
Doing the scientific animations for clients and myself haveforced me to learn specific parts of the software (usually at a basic level).Every time I start a new short film, I learn something more. Simple stuff, likegetting depth of field effects in Houdini’s compositor to work and cachingdynamic simulations, were breakthrough moments for me.
I watched Filip Tarczewski’s tutorial on creating andanimating tentacles using particles and the solver node, and used his techniquein a short film about macrophages hunting for bacteria.
I still struggle with VEX and VOPs. I keep going back toTokeru’s web pages for clues on making Houdini work without the shelf tools.
You cannot “know” every part of a software package. Myapproach has been to learn the bits I needed to know for a specific purpose.Each job I do with Houdini adds a bit more to my knowledge. Hope that this ishelpful.
Tim