Luca Pisanu

🪷 Stylized 3D Take on Ivysaur in ZBrush & Substance 3D Painter Take a look at this incredible NPR 3D take on Ivysaur, the evolved form of Bulbasaur, set up by Franco Diego, a Character Artist specializing in stylized character models. To create the model, the artist utilized ZBrush, Substance 3D Painter, Maya, Arnold, and Marmoset Toolbag. More renders and behind-the-scenes shots: https://lnkd.in/dwkMSx-J #3d #3dart #3dcg #3dmodeling #stylized #stylizedart #npr #characterart #characterdesign #pokemon #ivysaur #zbrush #maya #maya3d #arnold #substance3d #substancepainter #marmosettoolbag

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My latest personal project "Dogfight" ! Watch higher res here! https://lnkd.in/dPiMPJGa Responsible for environment, cloudscape, rigging, animation, FX, lighting, and compositing. Aircraft models and textures are taken from Ace Combat 7: Skies Unknown video game. This project is done using USD workflow in Houdini Solaris and rendered in Houdini Karma XPU. I had a lot of fun figuring out the crowd system for the aerial combat and linking it with the aircraft rigs. The flaps, rudders, ailerons, and the nozzles/thrusters are driven by the crowd system post-sim. The crowd system is just a particle simulation with some rules and custom attributes. These attributes are used to drive the aircraft rigs procedurally based on the motion of the particles. If you look closely, you should be able to see the aircraft components moving around. Some "fun" rules that I added: 📐 The attacking aircraft will choose a target in the opposing team based on the pilot's field of vision. 📐 Once a target is chosen, the attacking aircraft will actively try to get behind the target in order to get a missile lock. 📐 If missile lock is achieved, missile will be launched. 📐 The target aircraft will know if it is getting locked on by a missile and will actively try to dodge/evade the missile (or the lock on status) by doing sharp turns/maneuvers. Or else, it will get hit by the missile and destroyed. 📐 In order to not have the attacker and the defender chasing each other infinitely in a circular path, I added "stamina" attribute for each aircraft to emulate pilot's endurance. This "stamina" will get depleted when the pilot is doing a high-G turn (sharp turn) and will regenerate slowly when idle (not doing any sharp turn). 📐 If the "stamina" attribute is fully depleted, then the aircraft cannot do any turns and it will basically just go straight. Hope you enjoy! #houdini #vfx #cg #3d #aerial #combat SideFX Software

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Anchor Points in Adobe Substance 3D are soooo handy! Did you know that you can use Anchor Points to control multiple layers from ONE central layer - no matter how nested they are. Works for Color, Roughness, Height, and more. Way cleaner workflow for stylized texturing and no more digging through folders to manually adjust colors!

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🚀 Weavy just leveled up video. One compositor. Stills + motion. Infinite layering. Build complex clips with videos, images, and text — no timeline headaches. Crop, Blur, Merge, Matte — all your favorite nodes now power video too. Think real-time previews, responsive layers, and pro-grade control — all in one view. Full Tutorial on YouTube: https://lnkd.in/dj5HPr3X #Weavy #WeavyVideo #VideoTransformation #VideoCompositor #MotionDesign #CreativeTools #VisualEditing #RealtimeEditing #LayeredControl #DesignInnovation

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In a professional production pipeline (film, TV, or games), retopology isn't just a "cleanup" step—it is a mandatory bridge between the Artistic Sculpt and the Functional Asset. Retopology aligns edge loops with the natural muscle groups. This ensures that when an arm bends, the volume of the elbow is maintained. In animation, characters often need to speak or show complex emotions, allowing wrinkles to be created by specific edge loops. If the topology doesn't match the facial muscles, the character will look like a "rubber mask" rather than a living person. Here is video on the Quad Draw Tool

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It’s been a while since I posted anything, so here’s a simple tool for overriding rotation on a joint without using KineFX.

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🌟 Sunday Script Series – Episode 3 🌟 Today’s tool is the UV Transfer Tool 🎨✨ This is a simple yet powerful utility designed for both Surfacing and Rigging artists. ✔️ It transfers UVs seamlessly without leaving any UV transfer history on the mesh. ✔️ It even works on meshes with skin clusters, without disturbing skin weights. ✔️ And the best part – it keeps the mesh clean with no extra history attached. I’m really excited to share this because it’s one of those small tools that can save a lot of time and headaches in production. As always, more tools are coming up every Sunday — stay tuned for the next episode! 🚀 #Maya #Rigging #Surfacing #Automation #SundayScriptSeries

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[𝐁𝐫𝐢𝐧𝐠𝐢𝐧𝐠 "𝐎𝐛𝐣𝐞𝐜𝐭 𝐆𝐫𝐨𝐮𝐧𝐝 𝐁𝐥𝐞𝐧𝐝𝐢𝐧𝐠" 𝐭𝐨 𝐌𝐚𝐲𝐚 𝐯𝐢𝐚 𝐁𝐢𝐟𝐫𝐨𝐬𝐭] I’ve been experimenting with terrain normal blending using Maya's Bifrost. This is a classic procedural technique often seen in the Houdini community to seamlessly blend assets (like tree trunks) with uneven terrain, but being able to achieve this entirely within Maya feels incredibly empowering! By sampling the ground topology using closest_locations and handling the data via face_vertex_index, I built a setup that dynamically calculates the height weight between Start and End points to smoothly Lerp the normals. I absolutely love these kinds of subtle, "under-the-hood" techniques. They may seem simple at first glance, but they dramatically boost asset visual quality while keeping the scene and workflow lightweight. Seeing Houdini-level procedural logic natively integrated into Maya via Bifrost expands our pipeline options immensely. Next, I’m planning to bake this weight into vertex colors as a mask to drive dynamic texture blending in the shader! #Maya #Bifrost #TechnicalArtist #EnvironmentArt #3DCG #Autodesk #Procedural #TechArt

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Here’s a preview of a new spread from the 2025 Visual Effects & Animation World Atlas featuring a selection of studio openings, closings, mergers, and acquisitions from the past 12 months. (Expand it to full screen if you want to see the details.)   Several high-profile VFX and Animation studios collapsed during this time. But the industry outlook is less straightforward than some of the more attention-grabbing headlines and LinkedIn posts would have you believe.    New studios launched during this same period -- quite a few of them led by teams from companies that closed months, weeks, or even just days, before.    There’s also been plenty of M&A activity (with Dream/Machine FX and PFX among the most active groups). Well-known VFX brands were retired. Studios merged and secured new investment.   While the Atlas looks mainly at countries, cities, and skillsets rather than individual studios, I felt it was important to chart both some of the studios we’ve lost and some of the studios we’ve gained since the 2024 edition. This is by no means an exhaustive list. If you spot a company that’s missing or a date that’s not quite right, please call it out and I’ll fix it before the new edition launches in a couple of weeks’ time. #VFX #animation #vfxatlas

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Copy/paste Houdini style in Nuke. Copy/paste tools for Nuke that preserve and restore node input connections. When copying nodes, input connections are embedded as metadata in a hidden knob. When pasting, that metadata is read and the original connections are re-established(where possible), then the tracking knobs are removed. Link in the comments

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#SHAPES for #Blender: Quick Tip 17 Splitting complex sculpted expressions into any number of shape keys is a crucial step in many production pipelines. The Influence Map feature makes this process easy and reliable! #b3d #Blender3D #rigging #rigtip #character #3danimation

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Emile Edwin Smith on using AI as a director and visual effects artist. I’m Emile Edwin Smith - director, writer and visual effects artist. I did the visual effects for #battlestargalactica #firefly #sharknado many more. If you want to see more visual effects and learn about AI and VFX follow my channel. #sharkweek #CG #VFX #IndieFilmmaking #AIVideoTools #Blender #Maya #Lightwave #Unreal AITools #VisualEffects #ArtistOpportunity #TechAdoption #FutureOfWork #film #3danimation #klingai #runwaym| #krei a #lightwave #aftereffects #lightwave3d

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As part of our development work on Alien: Earth for FX, we reimagined the Xenomorph by revisiting H.R. Giger’s original 1979 concept for the creature in Alien. Giger’s early vision was for a translucent creature, its outer layer revealing a haunting, skull-like structure beneath. The idea was ultimately abandoned at the time due to the technical limitations of filming such a design - though a prototype suit was built, it never made it to screen. That early experiment was later rediscovered and restored, and the concept has since echoed through later films like Prometheus, where the translucent look finally found a home. We wanted to explore what that might have looked like today - using CG and design workflows to bring this idea to life. Here is a mockup with a concept from our exploration of the translucent Xenomorph - a nod to what could have been. #Alien #HRGiger #ConceptArt #VFX #Design #CreatureDesign #Film #FX #SciFi #Revenant

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🚀 What technology will change the VFX industry the most in the next 10 years? Possibilities include: • AI-assisted pipelines • Real-time rendering • cloud-based production • digital humans The pace of change in our industry is incredible. If you had to choose one technology that will dominate the next decade, what would it be? #FutureOfVFX #Technology #VisualEffects #NareshTalks

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Weekly Houdini Tip #3 - Whitewater rendering with Karma XPU For many years, the standard way of rendering whitewater in Houdini has been using the traditional Mantra renderer. Mantra is capable of producing a highly accurate, volumetric "wet" look that closely resembles real whitewater. However, Mantra is now becoming outdated and is being replaced because of its slow performance. As a result, it's important to explore alternative methods for rendering whitewater using Houdini’s modern, fast, and efficient built-in renderer, which is Karma XPU. While Karma XPU cannot interpret the legacy Whitewater shader from the Material Palette (since that shader is built with VEX nodes, which Karma XPU does not support), there are still several viable approaches to achieving a visually acceptable whitewater look using MaterialX-based workflows. 1. Rendering Whitewater points as particles - Adjust the pscale of your whitewater points to keep them small enough for rendering. - Apply a MaterialX Standard Surface shader to the WW points, they will be rendered as small spheres by default - Set Specular Roughness to a low value for a wet, shiny look. - Optionally tweak Transmission, Opacity or add color (you can use the Cd attribute from your points with the "MtlX Geometry Property Value" node) - This is the fastest method - on my machine, a full HD frame rendered in under 1 minute using Karma XPU. 2. Rendering Whitewater as a volume - Convert your whitewater points to a volume using nodes like "Volume Rasterize Particles", "Volume Rasterize Attributes", "VDB from Particles" - Apply a "Karma Uniform Volume" or "Karma Pyro material" and adjust Density and Shadow Density - This method takes longer to render, about 5 minutes per frame in my tests, but gives a softer, more mist-like result. 3. Combining Particle and Volume renders in comp - Volume rendering alone lacks specular highlights, so it can appear flat or dry. - To restore wetness, render the whitewater both as A) Volume for body/mist, and as B) Particles for specular highlights. - In compositing, layer the speculars from the particle pass over the volume pass. This blended result can closely match the look of the classic Mantra whitewater shader. It would be great if future Houdini releases include a ready-made Whitewater material using MaterialX nodes, that will be fully compatible with Karma XPU. If you’re aware of a better method for rendering whitewater with Karma XPU, or if I missed something, let me know in the comments. . . . #houdini #karma #sidefx #whitewater #sidefxhoudini #fx #fxartist #simualtion #flip #fluids #water #materialx #xpu #rnd #vfx #flipsimulation #tutorial #particles #volume #solaris #lops

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Meet Tencent HY 3D Studio 1.2 👋 A major upgrade to our 3D creation pipeline-now delivering sculpt-level detail with fine-grained interactive control. 🔥 🔹What’s new: PartGen 1.5 - High-Precision Component Control 1536³ resolution, up from 1024³, for sharper splits and finer detail Brush-based editing for precise, hands-on component refinement Improved shape integrity for complex geometries 🔹 Tencent HY 3D 3.1 - Sculpt-Level Fidelity Enhanced geometry that adapts cleanly to stylized inputs Major gains in texture and color accuracy for realistic results 8-view input support, expanded from 4, for higher reconstruction precision

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Master Houdini generalist workflows and learn how to build complete scenes faster. A new project-based course designed to help artists develop practical, production-friendly procedural workflows without unnecessary complexity. The focus of the course is speed, flexibility, and clean setups that scale, helping you move from isolated techniques to building complete scenes with confidence. 🔥 Launch Week Offer Use code HG25 for 25% off until June 6.

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Bird particle animation experiments in C4D, again using it's native particle system. The particles are driven by the pyro advect modifier, giving them a flaming phoenix feel. It got a bit destroyed by the linkedin compression, but you get the idea!

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