Nuke 17.0 Supports MaterialX for Complex Shaders

Experimenting with AI Image-to-3D workflows using ComfyUI + Houdini FX + Nuke. This is still an early WIP stage focused on testing AI-generated meshes and understanding their practical production use. Very honest review so far: These meshes are not ideal for rigging, deformation, or animation workflows yet. Topology and anatomy consistency still need a lot of cleanup. But for: static cinematic assets environment dressing FX collision geometry large-scale statues destruction/simulation work motion design elements …the results are actually very promising, especially considering limited hardware and fast iteration speed. Thanks to my team members Mahesh Pai and Nikhil Datir for helping develop and push this workflow faster Next stage: Houdini environments, simulations, lighting, rendering, and Nuke compositing 👀 #Houdini #ComfyUI #VFX #Simulation #CGI #AIWorkflow #HoudiniFX #Nuke #WIP

After completing Seneca's VFX program, I set out to consolidate new skills into a cohesive personal workflow. The challenge: migrate from Nuke/Redshift to DaVinci Resolve/Karma while maintaining colour accuracy across the entire pipeline. Project Scope: - Procedural terrain generation in Houdini - Advanced scattering techniques in Solaris - Pyro, RBD, and particle simulations - Scene-linear rendering in ACEScg - Full compositing and colour grading workflow What started as a straightforward post-grad project turned into a months-long exploration of colour science. Transitioning from Redshift to Karma meant adjusting my approach to lighting iteration, which gave me time to really dig into ACEScg workflows, transfer functions, and colourspaces. Key Technical Achievement: Developed a scene-linear workflow that preserves image integrity from render to final output, documented in a comprehensive blog post covering practical colour science implementation for CG artists. The research addresses a gap I noticed in available resources. Most documentation is either too theoretical (ITU specifications) or too software-specific. This guide provides software-agnostic principles for working with linear imagery, view transforms, and colourspaces. If you've ever been confused about gamma encoding, why your renders look different across programs, or what ACES actually does, this breakdown might help. Read the full post: https://lnkd.in/gdqAzpiB #VFX #Houdini #ColorManagement #TechnicalArt #ACES

🏆 Best of Term – Effects | Volumes (Fall 2025) "Seeing the extensive amount of layers come together to bring the chaos to life was the ultimate creative payoff, and the most fun I've had as an artist so far." Gnomon BFA student Jeffrey Kressin recreated General Grievous’s crash landing from Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith, the film that first sparked his passion for movies over 15 years ago. Starting from scratch, he focused on capturing the sequence’s chaotic energy through a combination of simulated and procedural FX, & enhancing the original scene's physics. By building workflow between Houdini & Nuke, Jeffrey was able to fine-tune AOVs and bring the full sequence to life. Congratulations, Jeffrey! Gnomon Course: VFX Design Instructor: Eric Araujo Software: SideFX Software Houdini & Karma, Foundry Nuke, Adobe Photoshop, Blackmagic Design DaVinci Resolve Concept: Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith (Lucasfilm / John Williams score referenced) #gnomonbestofterm #starwars #starwarsrevengeofthesith #starwarsvfx #starwarsvfxbreakdown

Check out my breakdown of a fully volumetric shot created with a 3D Gaussian Splat environment and a 4DGS character! This workflow shows a rendered video - not a real-time setup - which can be useful for film and non-real-time projects! You have total control of where you can place your cameras in the scene. Credits and special thanks to Neirin Jones, Prism AI, as well as Clear Angle Studios for the captures! What was my process? This shot is created in Houdini, using GSOPs (CG Nomads Ltd) tools as well as OTOY Octane Houdini render. - I merged the assets, and I was able to do colour correction with LUTs - Then I have some relighting options with the HDRI of the environment to match the light on the character - I used Octane render to create shadows and depth of field - I have done the final compositing of the shot in Houdini COPs - The color and relighting changes as well as fully composited scene could be also exported as a raw Gaussian Splat model to be used in real-time setup such as Unreal Engine and Virtual Production! Thanks to these tools and Gaussian Splatting, I could treat this 3D scene almost like 2D compositing of images in software such as Nuke. I also have depth pass information, which is useful to create additional effects. For colour correction, it was very useful to have the colour charts of the environment and the character. It could be extended with VFX such as particle simulations, as well as standard 3d meshes and animations! If you are interested in exploring 3D and 4DGS workflows, please let me know. I create and teach workflows that support projects with real-time and non-real-time setups! #GaussianSplatting #Houdini #GSOPs #4DGS #3DGS

Nobody talks about this, but the "VFX" industry is actually two different worlds. And mixing them up is the fastest way to hit a career plateau. Most students and creators think they are doing "VFX" when they are actually doing "FX"—or vice versa. Here is the breakdown that will save you months of confusion: VFX (Visual Effects) = The invisible bridge. This is about integration. It’s Nuke, After Effects, and Compositing. Your job is to make the fake look real. It’s about lighting, color matching, and the final "glue" that holds the shot together. FX (Special Effects/Simulations) = The digital physics. This is about creation. It’s Houdini, simulations, and particles. If it explodes, flows, burns, or breaks, that’s FX. It requires a deep love for technical math and physical properties. Why should you care? Because the industry is moving toward hyper-specialization. VFX Artists are the masters of the final image. FX Artists are the masters of technical chaos. I've spent years mentoring creators, and the ones who scale their income the fastest are those who pick a side early and master the specific tools for that lane. Don't be a "generalist" who is mediocre at both. Be a specialist who is indispensable in one. Which side of the brain do you lean toward: the artistic eye of a Compositor or the technical mind of a Simulation artist? #VFX #FX #Animation #CareerGrowth #MotionDesign #Nuke #Houdini #VFXArtist #MediaEducation

Took the time to learn proper VFX. Plugins I got for this purpose: ZonitoVisuals - must-have library of textures, flipbooks, and trails. Until now I was depending on ParticleEffects from Toolbox and editing/mixing those to get the look and feel I liked. Now I have the raw materials to build the exact effect I have in my mind. VFX Forge - nice tool to visualize the entire VFX in Studio, and then trigger it later with "forge.emit(vfx)" in the codebase, since all needed attributes are saved to the relevant instances. After following a tutorial from “Twist VFX,” I have a much better understanding and “vision” of how layered VFX really are. For example, even a simple explosion can have: base explosion, bright core, expanding flame shapes/wisps, smoke (dense + soft), sparks, embers, shockwave ring, dust/debris, glow, heat distortion. Building a VFX that works isn’t that hard. What’s hard is developing taste, understanding what actually looks good, and building the vision to break an effect down into smaller workable pieces. Now I have to keep producing VFX-s and try to reproduce other people’s awesome VFX-s. I always thought that a perfect/satisfying VFX is hard to make. Now that I have peeled back the layers, it is still hard to turn vision into reality, but at least now it doesn’t feel impossible 😃 In this demo, I replaced placeholder explosion, laser, and lightning effects with proper VFX. They are not perfect, but good enough for a first iteration and already give a massive visual boost to the game. #Roblox #RobloxDev #VFX

Houdini artists have been asking for native 3D object tracking for over a decade. And it's finally here! KeenTools, the team behind GeoTracker for Nuke, Blender, and After Effects, shipped a Houdini beta this week, and I had the chance to test it ahead of the announcement. A quick primer for those outside the FX world: GeoTracker is a pin-based 3D object tracker. You drop a model into your scene, click to "pin" it to your footage, and it solves the motion of that object in 3D — handling occlusions, deformable geometry, and focal length estimation along the way. Why this matters for FX artists working in Houdini: Houdini has never had a serious built-in object tracker. If you needed to integrate destruction, smoke, or fluid simulations onto a live-action plate, the workflow was always the same — track in Nuke or Blender, export the solve, then import into Houdini. Two pipelines for one shot. That handoff has been a quiet tax on FX artists for years. A solo TD doing a destruction shot on real footage had to know two ecosystems just to land a single deliverable. Studios absorb that cost with specialized matchmove teams. Independent artists and small shops don't have that luxury. A native, node-based tracking workflow inside Houdini changes the math on a lot of shots that previously weren't worth taking on. My early take after hands-on testing: it's a real production time-saver, intuitive out of the box, and it opens up a meaningfully wider range of FX work that can stay in a single application. A full deep dive is coming to my channel soon. Honored to be among the artists KeenTools featured in their announcement. If you do FX work on live-action footage, this one's worth a look. https://lnkd.in/gs_mM5MN

Hello everyone ☺️ Corsair is an FX shot created entirely in Houdini. The main goal of the project was to combine several types of complex simulations within a single shot, creating a dynamic and visually cohesive scene. I created the entire shot from start to finish, with the exception of the boat. FX 🌊 : FLIP simulations for the ocean (foreground, midground, and background) Rain FX Mist & atmospheric FX Water splashes and ocean interactions Layering and integration of the various FX systems to maintain clarity despite the scene’s density Lighting & Rendering 🌦️ : Lighting and mood direction directly in Houdini Pursuit of a cinematic look inspired by sea storms Work on contrasts, atmospheric depth, and the visibility of the boat at the center of the scene Compositing 🎞️ : Complete compositing in Nuke Integration of passes, atmosphere, depth, and final adjustments to enhance the shot’s intensity + rain on screen. Pipeline 🖥️ : Houdini for the entire FX, lighting, and rendering workflow Nuke for final compositing Above all, this project allowed me to push the boundaries of multi-FX simulation within a single environment and to refine the consistency between the different layers of water, rain, and atmosphere. Here is the link for the full res : https://lnkd.in/entJf2gQ #3D #FX #Houdini #FLIP #WaterSimulation #CGI #VFX #Nuke #EnvironmentArt #Procedural #OceanFX

💣 Cut production time: Eliminate Houdini round-trips for destructible assets Inherited a workflow where tweaking a fracture pattern requires exporting back to Houdini, waiting for a build, and re-importing? 💡 The Solution: A Houdini Digital Asset that brings art-directable fracture simulation directly into Unreal Engine with live parameter control. 🎯 What makes it different: • Live params inside Unreal via Houdini Engine — no more re-exporting for every tweak • Fracture any Static Mesh non-destructively and swap materials instantly to test different surface aesthetics without re-exporting • Swap between Voronoi and RBD Material Fracture on the fly • Export directly to Geometry Collection for Chaos destruction Built for technical artists, environment artists, and VFX folks who want destructible assets without breaking their workflow. 🔗 Preview the tool and get the details here: https://lnkd.in/eap6g7iu #UnrealEngine5 #Houdini #PipelineEngineering #TechnicalArt #GameDev

Pushing the boundaries of cinematic LookDev inside After Effects. 🌲✨ For this experimental visual R&D, I focused on advanced atmospheric environments and industrial grunge. Inspired by the legendary Andrew Kramer, I combined complex bevel edge systems, procedural decay texturing, and volumetric lighting. The project features a diverse mix of techniques—blending powerful native After Effects compositing with high-end 3D scenes built using the Element 3D plugin. #AfterEffects #MotionDesign #Element3D #3DAnimation #VFX