ZBrushCentral

Scientific animation: Bacteriophages

Just finished a short animation on Bacteriophages. You can find it on Youtube on the following link: https://youtu.be/b0ENsNmHq1A

The bacteriophages, bacteria and skin close-up were modelled in Brush. Animation and some of the compositing were done in Houdini 16.

Hope that you like it.

Tim

Phages on surface of bacteria.jpgPhages bursting ot of bacteria.jpgPhage lands on bacteria.jpgPhages multiplying inside bacteria.jpgPhages approach bacteria.jpg

Attachments

Phage lands on bacteria.jpg

Phages approach bacteria.jpg

Phages bursting ot of bacteria.jpg

Phages multiplying inside bacteria.jpg

Phages on surface of bacteria.jpg

Keep it up man! These look good, and it’s hard as heck to do everything from modelling to full animation and compositing by yourself, so kudos for that.

Interesting to see Houdini in a scientific visualization workflow, since most people prefer cinema4d.

looks good. Curious to know more about your workflow between Houdini and Zbrush, do you use goZ? Are you able to convert Zbrush created geometry for use in particle simulations
and the like in Houdini?

Thanks for your kind comments.

Re GoZ. I have used it when working between Modo and Zbrush, but I haven’t tried it between Zbrush & Houdini. I will give it a go in the future though.

When I was planning the animation I created models with different levels of detail: a “Hero” bacteriophage for the close-ups, and a decimated “phage” for the scenes where swarms were needed. The low res meshes worked well with copied onto 1000s of cached Houdini particles.

When I first started with Houdini, I was a stumped trying to get Zbrush obj files into scenes. However, with practice, it is really easy to get low/medium resolution obj files into Houdini scenes, using the geometry SOP (surface operator) node. Double click the Geo node and a file node is revealed - allowing you to load obj files exported from Zbush. Then, append a subdivision node below the file node. Set up a material with the colour, displacement, normal and any other maps that you created in Zbrush and apply it to the mesh at the Geometry level of the nodes. Light, render and (tweaking the amount of subdivision in the material’s displacement settings) and you get a render with nice Zbrush levels of detail.

DanNacu - you are absolutely right, in the UK most medical illustrators use Cinema 4D. The thinking particles and mograph parts of C4D are very interesting. The latest copy of “3D World” showcases some brilliant medical visualisation done in Cinema 4D by Farid Ghabari. However, the cost of the full suite of C4D tools is approaching Autodesk prices. Houdini Indie is much cheaper, and gives me access to some really useful tools. Also, SideFX are now allowing Indie users to render animations in 4K.

I’m curious to know how long it took you to get up to speed with Houdini (just started trying to learn it myself) I am finding the whole procedural approach very appealing but bewildering with trying to learn and remember all the different nodes, what they can do and why I might to use it. I’ve found a number of good tutorials and info - sometimes overwhelmingly so. It can be tricky to figure out what tutorials will be both accessible for a beginner and also relevant for someone making scientific or medical related animation. Right now I’m concentrating on learning things related to geometry and very beginner level vex. Sometimes I feel I’m not wired for this and want to forget Houdini (despite many years of 3d modeling and animation experience on a casual to moderate level) and stick to Modo and Zbrush. However, Houdini’s price and the challenge of learning something new and exciting keeps me plugging away at it… so that’s why I’m curious to hear about what your experience has been, how long did it take and what worked best for you to learn. Thanks!

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

Thank you Tim for sharing how you have been learning and growing as a Scientific/medical animator. Some good tips here on helpful learning paths. Much appreciated.