I have been extremely blessed and privileged to have made my career pursuing my dreams in the movie industry. My passion now is sharing with and helping others on their path. Whatever your dream, your passion is, I hope these videos help you on your journey.
There are so many ways to make things in Houdini and while I have been using the software for ten years, there is still so much to learn.
Si comparas los efectos de Godzilla vs los de avatar Godzilla no tiene nada que hacer si comparas los efectos de Godzilla vs peliculas como wonder woman 2017 wonder woman 1984 man of steel y snyder cut Godzilla se ve mejor incluso me atrevo a decir que minus one en muchas escenas supera a la primera pelicula del planeta de los simios que se nota mucho el cgi de los simios en esa pelicula del 2011 si a caso la del 2017 y 2024 son de primer nivel el oscar ya era de Godzilla por el simple hecho de hacer eso no importaria si the creator estaba en la lista asi lo veo yo saludos
Gracias por tus pensamientos. Aunque los efectos visuales de Godzilla son muy buenos, lo que hace tan spectacular es el hecho de que su presupuesto por la película entera fue menos que el presupuesto de VFX de los demás. Estoy de acuerdo que Godzilla debería ganar.
The creator had good visual effects. I think Godzilla also did a great job despite the limitations he has. In part, the Oscars also reward the effort of the Godzilla team except one who is very humble Godzilla is a character from popular culture, the academy partly felt that it owed him something for not nominating him years ago. If it wasn't this it wasn't any other Godzilla movie. Godzilla, minus one, does have very well-done scenes. The truth is, I feel happy for Godzilla in the case of the creator. It was a film that the script did not help at all, besides the fact that almost many did not talk about them, anyway, greetings
I appreciate your content and thoughts on the matter. I'm a houdini fx artist as well and I'm super curious about what you meant by "houdini feels old in comparison to ai now".. How are you using AI in your workflow? I'd like to see how I can grow in this area. Also how does houdini feel old to you?
That is a great question. Houdini feels old in the sense of the amount of setup that is required to get an effect, especially more complex fx. I love that process personally, but the industry is moving toward AI where you can just "ask" or "prompt" a result. That speed, the quality of the results in relation to that speed is what feels so new and incredible. Building our fx setups with all the granular control is costly, it is currently the better model for directability but it is costly and everyone wants cheaper but with quality. As AI can obtain better temporal coherency, physics training, and overall accuracy, our fx setups that integrate with AI will become much simplier and AI will help to elevate the smaller details. That is where I see the blend being, that is where I see art-directablity meeting AI speed. That will affect what an AI Fx artist job is. The reality is AI has been in development for a very long time and the current burst of speed of development is most likely not going to continue, much how block chain had many years of development before a rapid burst of public awareness and hype. Things will cool off as there are some scalability and legal challenges. But AI is here to stay and will become more a part of our daily work. For adding AI to your workflow, look at comfyui and some of the houdini integrations. There are also some interesting midjourney/houdini integrations. Thank you for sharing your thoughts and for watching my video! I really appreciate the value of your time.
@@RobAu2bitfx I see, all that makes sense. I hope that you’re right and it stays as an integration to our toolkit and not a replacement tool though I feel like companies will pounce on that opportunity once they can. The copyright issue is something I hadn’t really put together before as clearly as how you put it. Okay, I’ll look into some of those integrations. I’ve seen a few comfyui integrations on random LinkedIn posts. Do you have a recommended integration that you liked that you could point me to in particular?
The creator did not win any awards, none of them won awards that are almost irrelevant, it was logical that no one was very impressed by those effects, no matter how crazy it sounds, this time the academy left For something new similar to ex machina many will complain In 2017, a stop motion animated film entered the fray. I believe that all types of visual effects should enter the fray, not just CGI. The creator is a beautiful film in cgi although perfect it is not the only film without flaws in effects it is avatar in my opinion Godzilla seems like a fair winner to me, just as the creator could have been, Guardians of the Galaxy was not going to win because since Spiderman 2 Marvel doesn't win in that category, anyway, I think the academy was right to give Godzilla the Oscar. Just as if the creator had won, everyone would still have celebrated, that is my opinion, greetings
A total lack of respect that they play music when they are giving their speech happened in 2013, 2018 and 2024 When actors are allowed to talk for like 9 minutes without playing music, they should stop doing that.
I completely agree. I worked at R&H during Life of Pi and it was heartbreaking to see Bill get cutoff by music and then have his mic cut off. Hollywood has a very unhealthy Love/Hate relationship with VFX. Thank you for watching and sharing your thoughts.
I am very happy that Godzilla will win because in 2022 the academy belittled it by not including Godzilla vs Kong and including the unfinished film Spiderman No Way Home Now Godzilla minus one has really incredible scenes, the truth is that some parts fail but they are minimal now Poor creatures won the Bafta if they had been in Godzilla's place, the creator might not have won that award. On the other hand, I would like to know who the academy voters of that category are. And I'm not saying this because it bothered me that Godzilla would win, on the contrary, I was very happy. But for a while now I have wanted to know who the voters in those categories are. Since ex Machina won in 2016 over Star Wars, which had won awards, greetings
The voters are professionals from the VFX industry who have been invited to be a part of the Academy. There are hundreds of voters. They are sent screeners of all the films in consideration and they cast their vote for Best VFX. I am not in the Academy but I have some colleagues who are. Thank you for sharing your thoughts! The Oscar’s are always full of snubs and contentious picks. I think in this case, Godzilla minus one was the right pick. But as I said, if it had gone to creator I would have been accepting of that result too. Any of the other candidates, while having good VFX, I would have felt that it was not the right result. Thank you again for watching and for your feedback.
If anyone can simply write prompts, and create a VFX masterpiece, why anyone would need VFX artists in the first place?? I'm so frustrated and disappointed at the same time. I've been in education for 14 years, teaching music, computing, and freelancing as Sound Designer and VFX artist occasionally. After so many years, of learning, teaching struggling to stabilize myself (Greece is not the go to country for VFX career, at least not back in 2012), finally i'm in UK, where I can pursue my dream job, VFX generalist. But seeing all this AI taking place, I'm left hopeless...
Well, I would take heart. VFX is not dead. But it is evolving. While AI is making inroads, it is not at a full production ready level yet. There is still a lot of things that need to be solved to be usable. VFX can be a very exciting career. It is equal parts art and technology. Ai will change many jobs, but new jobs and opportunities will emerge. Thank you for sharing your thoughts. I hope you can find some renewed excitement and joy in your journey. Best of luck.
Would love to hear your thoughts on why the creator was “pretty bad”. I know there were things that i didnt love about parts of the story. Thanks for watching and commenting.
I’m sorry that you feel that way. The list is long of awards that I have felt the academy has gotten wrong in my opinion! But sadly I am not in the Academy and my opinion isn’t worth much. Thank you for watching and sharing your thoughts!
Nice video! I’d love your perspective on more stuff like this certainly. Might be fun to compare this to the older stuff like Shin or the new American Godzilla stuff
Hello! Could you make a tutorial about setting up AOVs for Redshift in Solaris? Can't find one, i've no problems setting up smth like a Reflection pass but can't figure out how to get to work ID or Cryptomatte
Im a visual artist who specilse in oil painting and 3D modeling and some graphic design. Honestly I can't wait when Figure 01 will take a seat by the computer and start working on videos for Hollywood. I think all artists need to embrace the new technology and find their place in the sector .
That will be interesting… will it be “The Jetson’s”, Spielberg’s “A.l” or will it be “Sky-net”? Only time will tell. Thank you for watching and sharing your thoughts.
Great vid, thanks Rob. The popularity in Hollywood to say “no CGI” is outdated. It’s archaic. I would argue that everyone outside of the pipeline is heavily misinformed, including the actors and directors wearing this lie as a badge of honour
Creator and Godzilla were both done with budget limitations and led by a VFX person. It was great they both got recognized. The risk reward. The creative problem solving. Godzilla’s budget limitations were greater but creator just looked better imo. But I’m a bit if a gareth fan boy with his diy story and attitude. His diy history and attitude makes me feel something in my gut. There’s a 2.5 hour shot deck pow wow with gareth and both DPs that posted a month or two ago if you haven’t seen it. Shot breakdowns. A real treat.
Thanks for the insight! Very informative take. The thing I loved about G-1 is that it felt like they were going for the ‘feel’ of the old Godzillas of the guy in a rubber Godzilla suit, but making it so believable at the same time. Loved this movie. The Creator would have been a solid choice as well.
Agreed. It felt true to its source material in an interesting way. The story was very human. And I agree, The Creator would have been a deserving winner as well.
Yes yes! I was thinking while watching this that I'd love to see you compare The Creator to Godzilla Minus One. Happy to just see your discussion on The Creator VFX and Gareth Edwards. Love to see this stuff.
I think all those things exist in Hollywood. There are many amazing filmmakers who represent all those qualities you mentioned. So why doesn’t that come through?! I would propose that it has very much to do with the top heavy system that crushes that creativity.
@@RobAu2bitfx The other nominated Hollywood films also have good VFX. But, Godzilla minus one have some scenes that feels appealing to the audience and more believable like the boat chase and the atomic breath on Tokyo.
I agree. I think that comes down to godzilla being made out of the system allowing for a director to have more creative control. So often entire acts of the movie are reshot at the last second making for rushed VFX and broken stories. Thank you for watching and sharing your insights!
I disagree. I worked on The Creator and Gareth Edwards was present for every call, meeting and decision made. It’s a question of time and finance. The Godzilla team are well deserving of their win; but what we achieved on The Creator, with minimal prep, stunning plates and clear, dedicated direction proved Hollywood can make $80m look like $250m with an original story not tied to a pre-existing franchise
I suppose I should qualify my statements better. I think the creator is another film that breaks the Hollywood mold. I had heard about Gareth’s process on this film, impressive. I wondered about what challenges the loose methods created in post. I don’t see creator as the typical Hollywood pyramid, where execs decide late to rewrite the third act, or the script was not even finished when shooting began. I think creator would have been another deserving winner. Gareth definitely had a clear vision. I would love to hear more about your experience on the film. Shoot me an email if you are interested in sharing your thoughts with me.
That is a choice only you can make. The industry is changing, but truth be told, it has always been in some state of change. It is a challenging field. One that can be rewarding and fulfilling. If I were beginning today, being young and full of passion and excitement to create, I would still pursue my career in VFX. It is like a calling for me. I do it because it is a part of me.
I dont see anyone using AI in visual effects...... A highschool guy for pocket money will be competing with you.... making the same thing for a couple bucks... people really be dreaming theyll be paid the same. youll be paid the same dollars per hour... and making a whole movie in couple weeks making a fortune for actors and production, And these people in 3rd world country can do the same thing as you with same QUALITY for a 10 dollar a week.... youre just typing shit and getting shit how much do you think you should be paid. ill pay them bare minimum wage.... you dont even need artistic or technical skills. people will be replicating marvel level visual effects but cant even make a cube in blender.... youll reach a point where nobody even wants to do it anymore....its just too easy to even bother doing....
That is all certainly possible. Method studios recently used AI to make the intro for Disney’s “Secret Invasion”. These tools are slowly making their way into the industry. And yes, they will make common and easy what was once difficult and therefore impressive. VFX will go from a five star restaurant to McDonald’s. We aren’t there yet, but that is a possible future. Thank you for watching and sharing your thoughts.
Adaptation now is the attempt to remain king of the hill when the hill is a pile of sand…. Even when you win, you’re losing. IMO, humans using AI are not advancing humans but rather doing the labor of working out the bugs for AI to eventually do it all itself-including writing all the prompts themselves. And after that it will be able to initiate entire projects on its own. There will be no need for anyone except those who own the AI…. And really, how long before AI can own things…?
All fair points. Early visions of AI were that it would do all the manual labor jobs so humans could all be artists, poets and scholars. Instead it is the other way around! Currently the ethics are abysmal and it has the ability to be industry destroying for sure. My video is not an endorsement of AI, but a look at the current landscape for those who work in VFX or at students hoping to get in. Thank you for your thoughts!
Great take. Do you think that Houdini and other DCCs will include AI features? I mean, it is pretty clear that if Sidefx, Maxon, Autodesk, and all these players don't adapt to this changing landscape, they will die. In my use of generative AI, I feel like there is a lack of control.
I definitely think we will see the addition of generative AI in the traditional DCCs. ML tools have been a growing part of Houdini and other tools, which are just the first step AI. I think something comfyUI would be a part of Houdini’s workflow. Maya will have some kind of AI “layer stack”. Everyone will have their flavor. The challenge, until the law changes, is that you won’t be able to copyright those outputs. Check out Adobe’s EULA for its autofill, it is essentially use at your own risk. With any AI tool read carefully what you are agreeing to. Currently, I agree that text to image or video feels very clunky and non deterministic. It is hard to make micro changes and have it be repeatable. But that will eventually be solved. I am not a fan of generative AI, but it is the future. At least, some version of it will be.
This was as far as I took this test. It was a proof of concept for a larger project that, sadly, is under NDA and cannot be shared. The general idea is here, though it needs refinement and finessing.
Nice one, trees were always my weak point (still is tbh) so nice to see an experienced person talk about it. I just always keep the trees far away from the camera so nobody could see how weird and repetitive they looked 😂 That said, have you tried out the Pegasus Flora tools? It's not the most intuitive thing rn (still in development) but seems like it might turn out to be a much more powerful toolset later on.
That is highly dependent on your lighting set up. The color and intensity of shadows is dictated by the color and intensity of the other lights in your scene. In a pbr renderer like mantra you don’t really control your shadows separately. There is no trick to use “fake caustic” on a mantra material. This will occlude less light, allowing for lights to pass through your material. My last suggestion is to use compositing to achieve this. I always render lighting passes and rebuild from my light aovs. I believe in mantra (I have moved on to karma since 18.5) you can output shadow maps per light. This can also be used in comp to make you desired affect. I hope this helps.
In this video we are rendering with karma cpu. We are using the karma principled shader. The principles are the same for rendering in mantra and Arnold. Just need to transpose the node names as each render engine has its own nodes which at times have different names. I would definitely render in karma over mantra, mostly because Solaris and karma are the future of Houdini and mantra will eventually lose support.
In this video we are rendering with karma cpu. We are using the karma principled shader. The principles are the same for rendering in mantra and Arnold. Just need to transpose the node names as each render engine has its own nodes which at times have different names. I would definitely render in karma over mantra, mostly because Solaris and karma are the future of Houdini and mantra will eventually lose support.
The idea was to have the airplanes on paths and the based on the curve of the path, have them pitch, yaw and roll. The idea being that for back ground and large swarms of airplanes, the animation time could be reduced. In addition, procedural noise was added to the paths to get more realistic flight characteristics. There is a larger sequence this was being developed for and put on hold.
Hey Rob, Have you noticed a delay in the audio playback, im trying to animate matching to the audio but seems like the audio is not playing in a consistent manner, sometime it plays few frames delayed than the viewport sometimes matching to the viewport.
Thanks for the tutorial! I came across the problem of having a cook error in the input node flip when trying to render the rop to disk. Does anyone know how I could solve this problem?
