Software Tips: Page 29

This Houdini 9 tutorial teaches how to sweep an object along a curve while orienting the object to the curve's direction. Learn how to apply a sweep sop to orient objects on curves in Houdini.

Watch shader writer, Mario Marengo, explain spectral wavelength and how to utilize it within Houdini. This presentation was recorded at a Toronto Technical Evening hosted by Side Effects Software.Shaders generally work in RGB color space. This is limiting when trying to replicate many lighting phenomena. Some of these phenomena are thin-film interference as with soap bubbles and light scattering in clouds. It is easier to work with color in spectral wavelength space, as opposed to RGB space, as...

In this video series, learn how to create a simple dynamic simulation by creating a procedural pre-vis avalanche in Houdini 9. Rigid body dynamics (RBD's) are a powerful and important part of creating visual effects in 3D. This tutorial shows you how to use them in Houdini 9 to create a procedural pre-vis avalanche.

This 7 part Houdini 9 tutorial series is about how to transfer color using dynamics is a great place to start to understand Houdini's dynamics in a significant way. Part one covers painting setup, two establishing a paint source, three creating paint, four defining paint colors with a solver, five painting with dynamics, six reviews how it works, seven setting up for render output. Learn to paint and transfer color with dynamics in Houdini 9 and get more control over your work in this tutorial.

This Houdini n9 software tutorial covers a very simple lighting and rendering scene to show the basic workflow for generating a PBR render. We use a digital asset to quickly establish a group of geometry to light. In the lesson we also add an area map so that we can extract the lighting information from it. There are two .rat files to experiment with, the seashadow.rat file simply provides a pattern. The st.peters_cross.rat is an HDRI image from the Debevec site. Watch and learn how to set up...

This series of videos focuses on a typical UV workflow in Houdini 9. Learn how to create projections, edit UVs with a variety of tools, save out UV maps, and apply textures. Please download the project files below to follow along with these Houdini 9 texturing lessons.1. Simple UVs:Start with this lesson, it quickly covers the major steps we will use in the subsequent 4 lessons. This is a good overview showing the tools and workflow that will be repeated many times.

In the following series of videos we will establish a particle stream that is then used to create a surface that evolves over time in Houdini 9 software.Part 1 covers Surface From Particle Stream: This is a very simple introduction to how a stamp function is defined in a copy sop. We then generate a series of stamp functions applied to a box, copied to a stationary grid and to a particle system as well.Part 2 covers Guided Surface From Particle Stream:In this example we continue with the...

These two Houdini 9 lessons illustrate a valuable and efficient means of modeling an animated surface in a manner not generally considered. It provides an explanation of the advantages to this approach and compares it to a more traditional means of animating a surface. So watch the tutorial and learn how to animate a stingray in Houdini 9 using newer style animation methods.

This Houdini 9 tutorial shows you how to roll and unroll a surface without using expressions. Learn how to roll a surface with the Wireblend tool in Houdini 9. Once you create the rolled surface, you can also animate it.

This Houdini 9 CHOPS lesson shows one aspect of the usefulness of the Channel Operator editor. In this case we extract a curve from a geometry surface and use that curve to animate a ball moving across the surface. To learn more about animating with chops in Houdini 9, check out this tutorial.

This open source software tutorial shows you how to use the tile clone tools in Inkscape. The tile clone tool allows you to create the first few tiles and then clone them to create an entire grid or fill a specific area with the tiled pattern. Check out this Inkscape tutorial and start expanding your graphic design abilities.

This open source software tutorial shows you how to put text around a circle in Inkscape. This is similar to having text follow a path, but you have the text follow a circle. Improve your graphic design abilities with this Inkscape tutorial.

In this software tutorial you will see how to create a polaroid picture and make it look like it is pinned up on a wall using Inkscape. All you need for this creative pinned-up polaroid is a picture and the open source software Inkscape.

In this software tutorial you will learn how to turn a regular photo into a 3D looking image or make the photo pop out in a pseudo-3-dimensional way using Inkscape. This is a clever way to use Inkscape to play with photos and could be used for graphic design or scrapebooking type applications.

If you do any amount of graphic design or layout design, then you know the importance of using kerning when working with typeface. This Inkscape software tutorial shows you how to manually kern text within Inkscape. This isn't the best graphic design software, but it is open source and if you are using it for layout you may need to use text kerning and will find this video helpful.

In this software tutorial you will learn how to make a simple paperclip from scratch using the curve tools in Inkscape. Inkscape is an open source freeware software so it's easy to get ahold of and start using for your graphic design needs.

This software tutorial shows you how to draw a file folder from scratch in Inkscape. Besides learning how to create file folder images or icons, you will learn how to use some of the basic tools in Inkscape like the align tools.

This software tutorial shows you how to create a shiny glass globe from scratch in Inkscape. Learn how to use 2D effects to create a 3D looking sphere all within Inkscape.

In this Inkscape software tutorial you will see how to create a shiny web 2.0 style button or icon. There is no sound but the picture and mouse movements are clear enough to follow along visually. So watch and learn how to create a crisp reflective web 2.0 style button in Inkscape.

This Houdini 9 software video series focuses on examples of when and how to use Attribute Transfer.

In this Houdini 9 video series, you will take a look at the new dynamics shelf tools and see how easy it is to create fairly complex simulations very quickly.A demonstration of how to setup dynamics and particles, working together, within the 3d viewport. It will cover pin contraints, rigid body collisions, particle systems, collisions and gravity in Houdini 9 dynamics.

In this Houdini 9 video series, you will take a look at the new dynamics shelf tools in Houdini 9 and see how easy it is to create fairly complex simulations very quickly.Get a review of the previous lesson plus learn how to use an attribute transfer to color particle impacts on rbd boxes.

In this video series, you will take a look a the new Houdini 9 interface and learn how it will make your work faster and easier.Part 1 covers interface navigation: Preliminary tour of the default interface of Houdini and how to navigate in the 3d viewport. As well, how to bring in a primitive from the tool shelf, and the changes to interface functionality.Part 2 covers changing UI Preferences:Modifying the user interface to suit the users needs.Part 3 covers CTRL+LMB Start:The basic operations...

In the following lessons you will learn some essential tools and techniques for working with muscles in Houdini. In the first lesson, you will learn how to rig up a simple muscle arm using Houdini's Muscle tool. The Muscle tool uses meta-balls to capture your character's skin with realistic muscle/skin interaction.

This scroll saw pattern tutorial shows you how to work with Corel Draw vector graphics drawing software to create your woodworking patterns. If you love cutting, but haven't tried designing, this video will give you some ideas on how to get started creating your own scroll saw patterns using Corel Draw.

If you are new to Corel Draw, you need to learn how to use some of the very basic tools provided. In this beginners tutorial you will learn how to work with the rectangle tool, ellipse tool and polygon tool in Corel Draw vector graphics drawing software. See how you can apply these tools to your scroll saw patterns as well.

The bezier tool in Corel Draw allows you to create a certain type of curve. In this tutorial you will learn how to work with and control the bezier tool in Corel Draw as you create scroll saw patterns.

In this scroll saw woodworking pattern tutorial you will learn how to create word art in Corel Draw vector graphics drawing software and use that word art as part of your scroll saw pattern designs.

This software tutorial shows you how to draw artistic text and artsy shapes in Corel Draw X3 that can be used for scroll saw patterns. If you do scroll saw woodworking and like to create your own patterns, learn how to get started by creating artistic text in Corel Draw X3.

This scroll saw woodworking pattern tutorial shows you how to create a heart jewelery box pattern in Corel Draw X3. Corel Draw allows you to draw vector based patterns that you can print and use for your scroll saw creations. This particular pattern will be used to make a heart box.

In this scroll saw woodworking pattern making tutorial you will learn how to get the clip art you find off the computer, into the computer and into Corel Draw X3 so you can use it for your scroll saw patterns. Watch and see how easy it is to scan clip art into Corel Draw X3 and start making new scroll art patterns.

This Corel Draw vector graphics drawing software tutorial shows you how to type text along a curve. Specifically you will learn how to draw a curve, and get text to follow the curve as part of making scroll saw patterns. If you are a pattern maker or not, you can learn how easy it is to put text on a curve in Corel Draw X3 in this video.

In this scroll saw woodworking pattern creation tutorial you will learn how to use the Corel Draw vector graphics drawing software to create a simple scroll saw pattern. You will learn how to use the clip art available in Corel Draw to create scroll saw patterns.

This software tutorial is for scroll saw woodworking pattern creating beginners. If you haven't done much scroll saw work, or created any of your own patterns, this tutorial will show you how to make a basic scroll saw pattern in Corel Draw vector drawing software.

In this scroll saw woodworking tutorial you will learn how to work on your scroll saw pattern development in Corel Draw X3. Corel Draw is a vector based drawing software and you will learn why vector graphics are better than bitmap graphics for scroll saw patterns and also how to use the pick tool.

If you do scroll saw woodworking art and create your own patterns, a great way to create those patterns is in Corel Draw. In this video you will learn how to use the guideline tools in Corel Draw to help align your scroll saw patterns as you create them.

This tutorial shows you how to download, install and use the free program Stop Motion Animator. See how to set up and configure your animation settings, how to set the proper compression and then use the camera on your computer to shoot the frames for a stop motion animation. When finished, just output directly from the Stop Motion Animator software and you'll have your stop motion film done. Stop Motion Animator makes creating films as easy as this three minute tutorial.

This tutorial demonstrates use of the Native Instruments' MASSIVE synthesizer, which shifted the paradigm for software synthesis development in late 2006. MASSIVE's fat, analog sound is unique to the soft-synth world, offering a wide scope of sound design possibilities. But underneath all that, it is an extremely simple-to-use, great-sounding engine that can provide some of the baddest bass tones you've ever heard. And remember: all patches discussed in the video are available through...

One of the cheaper ways to create a captioned podcast is with QuickTime pro. This tutorial from Donna Eyestone will walk you through the captioning process, from generating a text document to deciding upon display settings. Take a look!

This software tutorial shows you how to work with images and text in Corel Paint Shop Pro X. Learn how to create and modify text and overlay the text on images in Paint Shop Pro.