Hi,
i am new to this site…
i have been as a Houdini Fx td in live film, series and animation for about 10 yrs. Now i would like to enter into the gaming industry mostly unreal. and i want to be in fx mostly.
Can anyone guide me , how does it work and what could be the process of learning and placements and all
thanks in advance
Hi Ashok,
Wanting to enter the gaming industry as an fx artist working in Unreal? Then Niagara particle system would be your best friend. Not just the basics but also advanced stuff such as writing your own scratch pads/modules as well which gives you a lot of customization options for things you can’t do with the default modules that come with Niagara. Also learning to use Unreal’s Material Editor is important since you would be using it along with Niagara.
Making textures is a little more flexible since there are a variety of options: Substance Designer, Photoshop, Krita and even Houdini.
However when it comes to games Houdini is often used for creating flipbooks of your simulations. Good thing you already have knowledge and experience of this software so all you need to do is learn the workflow for creating flipbooks, getting RBD sims, e.t.c from Houdini to Unreal such as the Vertex Animation Texture (VAT) workflow. Good thing Houdini has inbuilt tools for doing that which can mostly be found under the SideFX Labs toolset.
On the optimization side of things which is very important in the gaming industry, you would need to pay very close attention to the resolution size of the textures you make; usually anything between 256 to 1024p should be good but the lower the better so long it doesn’t affect the quality of your effects. And the number of triangles of you meshes to be used in you particle system should be also low and just like textures, so long quality isn’t sacrificed as well. There are lots of other optimization and debugging techniques but those can all be learnt along the way as you continue learning.
Lastly, this forum (realtimevfx) is really good for learning, getting feedback and finding solutions to questions. I would also recommend the VFX Apprentice learning platform; there are lots of courses from beginner to advanced (paid and free), there are two feedback sessions every week and the community there is fantastic. All these combined plus free YouTube videos, of course, would help getting you started and take you far in the industry.
I am sure there are one or two things I forgot but think someone else more knowledgeable might add it.
Anyways, good luck as you begin the wonderful journey of real-time vfx.
Really thankyou for the wonderful reply and great info. I would really appreciate the time you spent for this. I will be in constant touch and will be discussing more on this.
thankyou