Here is the interview of Miguel Pérez Senent, a young (16 years old!) and talented VFX artist and self-taught Houdini Apprentice artist from Valencia, Spain.
Miguel is very active in the Houdini community and is always willing to share his ideas. His website even includes a Houdini tutorial and he has been known to put downloadable Digital Assets on the forums at odForce.
Using SideFX Houdini and Autodesk 3ds max. Miguel is always at the school for now, but is really talented and would like to be a VFX pro artist, we hope with a such talents Miguel Should not have any difficulty in the future!
Hello Miguel, can you describe you ?
Hello, I'm a young visual effects artist studying at the high school and working in this as a hobby :)
How do you started into the CG world ?
I initially knew the CG world thanks to a friend who gave me an early version of Autodesk 3ds Max. I found it curious and entertaining so I started looking for more information and learning with the internet.
What's your background (fine arts, studies, ...)
Well, at the moment I'm at high school, so I don't have any special academic background (Grins) ;)
Are you professional CG VFX or going CG as hobby ?
The VFX are a hobby for me now ! But I'm planning to work in the industry as soon as I can.
What's softwares do you commonly using for you CG works ?
I mainly use SideFX Houdini for the 3d work, and sometimes Autodesk 3ds Max because it has some useful plugins.
For the composition I always use Eyeon Fusion.
As we can read on your website, you started with Autodesk 3dsmax and now going to Side Effects Houdini ? What's for you the best strong of both softwares ?
For me the best of SideFX Houdini is its procedural way of work with nodes !!
I can't imagine a better method to work in a scene than Houdini's. Also a great thing about it is the integration between the different contexts (particles, dynamics...).
The part I like of 3ds max are some plugins like Afterburn or FumeFX, which are really good and can produce amazing results !
What's Side Effects Houdini can offer to you and Autodesk 3dsmax can't ?
Well, they are very different programs, but Houdini can work in a very low level which 3ds max can't reach, and that's very useful for visual effects. It also has a better particle system and dynamic tools, a great renderer, and many more.
Can you explain us how-to about you astéroïd crash ?
The meteor and it's fragments in this piece were procedurally modeled.
The main meteor was animdo you buy a nice car withated by hand and the small fragments were
copied onto particles using the stamp function.
The earth is a single
sphere with a VOP shader with two layers (land and clouds) and some
bump in the clouds to give them a volumetric look. The rocks are shaded
using the default granite surface shader, and a fractal dent shader for
the displacement.
The background stars were created using scattered
points with a constant shader.
The modeling parts
I modelled everyting in Houdini. The Earth was a simple sphere and the meteor was a sphere modified with some noise.
The textures and Shaders
The earth texture was a single shader that used two images I took from the internet. The meteor shader was completely procedural and used some noise.
The atmosphere burning
I made the fire with many Houdini particles rendered as points and tweaked a lot in Fusion, where I also added some camera shake.
The environnement integration
To integrate the smoke in the field in the final shot I used a key light and then some other lights to fake the bounce of the ground and the sky. I also adjusted a bit the colors in Fusion .
The ground exploding
I made the explosion using Pflow in 3ds Max so I could render it with Afterburn, the volumetric renderer. I had around ten different particle elements, all rendered in one pass.
Somes comment or advises for TDT3D users who would like goind into CG VFX, what's best to do before starting ?
I would say : Go for it and practice a lot ! There are no more secrets !
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Hello Miguel, can you describe you ?
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