Guido Ponzini, a Senior VFX Technical Artist, has shared a new course that gives a complete overview of the most common workflows for creating short movies and film-making with Houdini and UE5.
The course is mentored by Guido Ponzini, a Senior VFX Technical Artist and a HoudiniFX Artist at EDI (Effetti Digitali Italiani) and Supernova Games Studios (505 Group). Previously Guido contributed to Ubisoft Annecy and Studio Gobo, working on XDefiant and an unannounced AAA title. He is also a HoudiniFX and Unreal Engine teacher at the University NABA in Milan, certified at CGMA Academy and Rebelway. His short movies in Unreal Engine, Life is a Rally, and Faust for Vyrus, have been awarded by Motion Design Award and featured on Epic Showcase.
The core topics covered in this course:
1. Houdini to Unreal Engine Workflow. The mentor will share the main techniques to exchange assets between Houdini and UE.
2. LookDev Scene. By building a LookDev scene in UE from scratch, you will start learning Houdini procedural asset creation already set up for later texturing in Substance Painter. You will learn how to make a Master Material for the exported texture, how to implement the techniques seen in the previous chapter directly in the engine, how to use Lumen and Skylight for an effective studio lighting setup, and how to use Levels to have a fast and reusable organization of your project.
3. Procedural Building. In this part, the mentor will show the technique used for modeling the core building inside the short movie and will explain how to export it in Unreal Engine.
4. Breakdowns. The 4th chapter of the course includes a complete breakdown of 2 scenes of the short movie, with an overview of assets and shaders. You will learn how to set up cameras and sequencers, how to add template animations, and control them to get a realistic handheld camera movement. Also, Guido will provide you with a brief overview of DaVinci Resolve's finalization of the project, some suggestions about Script and Music as well as an analysis of each shot according to image composition techniques.
5. Short Films Analysis. In the end, the mentor will share an analysis of 2 previous chapters, so you could better understand the story-driven and the episodic approach in short films.
You may learn more about this course here. Also, don't forget to join our new Reddit page, our new Telegram channel, and follow us on Instagram and Twitter, where we are sharing breakdowns, the latest news, awesome artworks, and more.