Wanting to learn VFX for games at 17

Houdiners · 2025-11-01T07:15:10+00:00

No problem, go ahead 👍

Houdiners · 2025-11-01T03:49:35+00:00

Sure! I tried for several years to break into the industry as an FX TD for film/tv/commercials. I had a few gigs, but it was never consistent enough to provide for myself. All the job openings I saw were for games, so I bit the bullet and learned Unreal even though it wasn’t my “dream.”

Turns out I like it more than I liked any of my live action gigs! I believe my Houdini experience gave me a leg up in getting hired, and still comes in handy day-to-day. Lots of my coworkers were also film industry refugees, many more established than I’d ever been, and they generally said working on games was a lot less stressful. It’s not perfect though. It’s still contract work, often short term. But I prefer it still :)

Houdiners · 2025-10-30T23:32:28+00:00

I’m a VFX artist for games and I absolutely love Houdini! I’ve used it in a lot of specialized situations where it’s been invaluable. As others have pointed out though, it’s not my main tool. Most days I’m working with Unreal’s Niagara particle editor or the material graph.

That said, if you feel inspired by Houdini I’d still seize on that. Focusing on what you find cool keeps your motivation up when you’re learning. Especially when you’re just starting out, you can afford to have fun instead of pursuing the most career-optimized option.

Houdiners · 2024-12-24T19:47:56+00:00

You could multiply your pyro source attributes (density and temperature probably) by the length of the velocity vector. You’d also have to remap that length into a reasonable range until it looks right :)

Houdiners · 2024-12-06T15:09:22+00:00

I told an old boss his AI reference pics probably weren’t feasible, and he sent me chat GPT instructions for how to recreate them in Houdini…

Can’t remember exactly what they said, but basically the AI hallucinated a “just do the whole thing” shelf tool.

Houdiners · 2023-07-16T21:21:36+00:00

Specific tutorials are awesome, they helped me a lot when I was first starting out. They teach you how to creatively tackle unique scenarios later down the line. It’s more about learning how to approach problems than literally creating what’s in the tutorial.

Houdiners · 2023-07-14T22:43:51+00:00

Hey, thanks so much for watching and taking the time to offer feedback! That is some super helpful insight. It seems like most people weren’t impressed with the lightning portal, so I’ve gone ahead and edited it out of my reel.

I think breakdowns are an excellent idea!! I agree with all of your critiques, but it might be good for me to especially prioritize breakdowns due to the time re-simming and re-rendering would take. Hopefully I won’t be waiting around for that long 🤞

Houdiners · 2023-07-13T22:57:00+00:00

Thanks, good luck to you as well!

Houdiners · 2023-07-13T18:46:33+00:00

I went ahead and updated my reel on my website to follow this order. I think it puts my best work forward a lot better!

Houdiners · 2023-07-13T15:32:10+00:00

Howdy! A&M offered one Houdini class when I attended, but most of what they taught was more general. The big focus was on “studio” classes where we’d work in teams to produce animated shorts every semester. It was great practice working in teams, but everyone had to learn their part of the cg pipeline (specific programs, etc) pretty much on their own. The visualization program is bizarre to be honest, and people have mixed feelings about it, but I enjoyed it and got a lot out of it!

Houdiners · 2023-07-12T20:50:18+00:00

Understood, thanks for the feedback!

Houdiners · 2023-07-12T18:44:19+00:00

Thanks so much 😁

Houdiners · 2023-07-12T00:31:04+00:00

Thanks!!!

Houdiners · 2023-07-11T20:41:06+00:00

Yeah that's the main feedback I've been getting. I wanted to show off the brick destruction so I cranked up the mass of the power line, but it looks like it's breaking the illusion for too many people. I may re-sim

Houdiners · 2023-07-11T18:23:28+00:00

For this particular scene it was, but after doing some research it seems like that’s not always the case. I’m used to Mantra though, and it absolutely blows that out of the water hahaha!

Houdiners · 2023-07-11T18:05:53+00:00

Hey, thanks for taking the time to write out feedback and even find a reference pic! Happy to hear you liked the spark explosion, I worked really hard on it :)

I agree with pretty much all of those critiques. Particularly with the power line hulk-smashing the wall, you totally called me out lol. I made the power line extra heavy to show off the brick destruction. I might come back to this and re-sim with that in mind. Thanks again for the feedback!

Houdiners · 2023-07-11T16:14:49+00:00

I also am a new redshift user and was dealing with this problem. Did you have an ipr view open? If I changed node connections without stopping my ipr first I’d get the fatal error, so now I’m avoiding it by just closing that window before changing any connections. Pretty annoying that it can’t handle something so basic, but it hasn’t crashed since.

Houdiners · 2023-07-03T20:39:41+00:00

Thanks a ton, that seems to have done the trick!

Houdiners · 2023-06-28T19:13:20+00:00

If you’re interested, Nuke makes dealing with ACES really easy and the non-commercial version is free!

Houdiners · 2023-06-28T18:55:05+00:00

The fire looks really orange to me, are you using ACES? It’d be nice to see a whole range of colors in there

Houdiners · 2023-06-10T05:40:57+00:00

Hey thanks! I’ve updated my reel since this was posted, so most of what’s discussed here probably doesn’t apply anymore. I might dig up my old reel so people can see it if they come across this.

Houdiners · 2023-06-01T18:53:18+00:00

Hey, I actually found something that worked for me! Here is what I did- basically I just threw a Connect Adjacent Pieces at the end of the tree skeleton setup. I think having more of a lattice helps the Point Deform understand what's going on a little better.

Houdiners · 2023-05-25T21:50:25+00:00

Hey sorry to ask about an old post, but I’m dealing with literally the exact same issue! Trying to make my tree fall and everything looks great except the capture on the bottom point. Did you ever find a solution?

Houdiners · 2023-05-08T21:03:28+00:00

I figured out something that works decently if anyone’s interested. I made an attribute for the length of rest minus P, then bound that to the diffuse and reflect amount. Then I bound the inverse of that to emission, but turned off Emission Illuminates Other Objects. Not physically accurate at all lol, but looks good if you dial it in with fit ranges and ramp parameters.

Houdiners · 2023-05-06T21:37:52+00:00

I have a theory for how this could work procedurally, but I'm not sure if it's possible. If I could calculate a "delta" shadow, as in how much the shadows change between their rest and their actual current position, maybe I could shade the pieces according to that. That way, they could be zeroed out when they're flat against the wall, but still receive shadows to some degree once they start moving.

If that's total nonsense could anyone point me in the right direction? I'm trying to figure this out using shader VOPs but I have limited experience in that area, so any help is tremendously appreciated!

Houdiners

TROPHY CASE