The topic for HOUD201 is debris, a staple, bread and butter type of fx work that happens on many films and commercials, and that you will do at least once in your fx career. This could include pieces of glass kicked by a cg character's foot, for example in The Incredible Hulk, or bits of dirt crumbling down a roof from a character climbing, like some shots I worked on in They Came From Upstairs / Aliens in the Attic, or many other situations where debris helps set the CG into the live action, or must help to tell the story.
Content
Class 1: In this first class for Houdini 201, we very briefly touch on what's new in Houdini 10. Check out www.sidefx.com for complete information, and for the apprentice version of Houdini we'll be using in class. We discuss our topic for class, which is Debris in fx production. We then begin with an introduction to DOPS (Dynamic Operators), How to Get Covering Started with a few simple examples, a Look at the interface and a few Key Points to Keep in Mind.

Class 2: In this second class for Houdini 201 we continue our introduction and overview of DOPs. We cover the following Topics: Creating and Tweaking rotational movement in DOPS, Friction and Dynamic Friction, Collisions, and Interaction and Animated Objects.

Class 3: FX Shot for HOU201. We'll introduce the shot we'll be working on this term, and delineate the elements needed to create a shot similar to the pirates shot. We'll highlight some typical issues in production, including: naming conventions, director changes, digital assets for working on many shots, and more. We'll Get What's Needed INTO Get Started on to Our shot, Including Creating the chunks That Will be flying INTO the scene.

Class 4: Blowing chunks. We'll finish up any modeling for our chunks, get them moving and tweak things, and discuss topics such as moving chunks and interacting with ground (rotation and sliding), volumes and adjusting resolution for additional control and static vs animated geometry and more.

Class 5: We'll Discuss Workflow issues, such as: preroll, Sims (Creating, Saving and importing Sims), and fps Playback, troubleshooting, and consolidating tools INTO Digital assets for Production.

Class 6: Setting up lights, shaders, and render passes for the Chunks.

Class 7: In this class We continue to Develop Our Digital Asset as We work through the Look of Our shot, making Exploding chunks, and Fine tuning the Control Panel of Our Debris tool.

Class 8: In this class We continue to Add to Our Digital Asset, using a magnet force to Improve Our ??explosion, Adding a element clumps Which includes using the stamp Along with Other POPs tips, and Get Ready to render next week.

Class 9: In this class, we set up all of Our render objects and outputs and related issues to Discuss rendering all of Our Elements.

Class 10: In this class, we finish up our class with a final look at the settings and add in some dust impact elements as a final bonus.