The challenge here is to learn how to think and work procedurally. You will build a belt of asteroids starting with a simple grid, and using procedural techniques and expressions to create more than a hundred different rocks that will form the belt. You will learn to randomize geometry using expressions. You will be working with the following surface operators:

Polysplit, facet, primitive, color sop, measure (to create perimeter attribute), delete sop, resample, connectivity, transform, polyextrude, mountain, subdivide, fractal, crease, fuse, point, switch, isooffset, scatter, copy node, group, rest, and rop. You will use expressions to pass data, reference data, import data, and manipulate geometry. You will learn about relevant Houdini expressions and functions. Later you will then use Mantra to create displacements, fresnel effect, subsurface scattering, render using micropolygon with motion blur, depth map shadows and takes to create passes. You will learn every aspect of the new Mantra Surface Shader.

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Introduction to Particles in Houdini: Learn how to emit particles based on normals, work with collisions and create collision events. Study how to create post-collision behaviors (like changing the rotation of particles and the color after the event occurs). Learn about Collision attributes. We will explore using particles attributes like id, pscale, life, velocity, mass, rotation. Understand the property pop, force and drag pop. Understand the relevance of velocity. Using some techniques from previous course, to measure the curvature of geometry and use scatter sop to emit particles based on the curvature and velocity. Learn about upvector pop and rotation pop.

Students will learn to create groups of particles, to avoid particle leaks on collisions. We will also cover the convertion of geometry to volume using iso-offset for more advanced particle collisions. Then we will move to other areas such as  fields, attractor, point forces, how to create new generation of particles that inherit attributes and use those attributes for different cool effects like creating trails. We will be fracturing a geometry and creating a basic rigid body simulation so we can add debris and mimic real production setup.

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On this class we will focus on recreating a film effect, based on the use of fluids and particles together. You will learn about using fluids as a base for more complex particle behaviors, by inheriting velocity from the fluids. This technique is called advecting particles by velocity field. The class will head toward the creation of a system that you will use as reference and to comprehend the theory behind.

You will then make your own system and apply it for the development of your effect. You will build everything from scratch and will finish it by rendering it on Mantra. You will learn how to load heavy geometry in Mantra only on rendering time without loading such geometry in Houdini. At the end of this curse you will have a nice shot for your demo reel. You will apply all the knowledge gathered on this and previous curses. You will be able to use this technique to create a diversity of effects such as gas emission from planets, nebula creations, ink over water or as a base to create the popular nightcrawler effect from x-men.

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