This is the first in a series of improving my digital skills. The goal is to follow tutorials and post my progress here. I will use various tools including, but not limited to, Houdini, Touch Designer, Unreal Engine, Unity, Maya, Blender, After Effects, and even Photoshop character and environment concepts.
In this sketch, I explore Houdini's nodal network and particle system through this beginner tutorial by Chetal Gazdar.
Which can be found on the sidefx website.
Process
I started with a sphere and a ground plane. I used a popnet that is derived from points on the sphere. From there I added a gravity force that is bounced off the ground plane. I also added a rotation to the sphere to add more dynamic to the animation.
Here I started to manipulate the stream creating a string like effect. In the popnet node, I added a popdrag and sopsolver.
To enhance the stringy effect of noodles I included a popgrain node.
From here, I could add the wireframe for the noodle structures. I added polywire and subdivide for the dimensions of the noodle strings.
Here is the final render sequence. I added a (SHOP) collada surface shader and adjusted the colors, to give it that noodle look and feel.
Final Render