cmiVFX – Houdini AI Vision System

cmiVFX has released its first Artificial Intelligence Brain solution for SideFX Software's Houdini Animation Software Package. This video is a milestone in cmiVFX history, for it is currently the only one of its kind. Our mentor delves deep into the virtual psyche of the Visual Effects Artist's mind by preparing a digital brain solution for a car animation with obstacles. Naturally, since this process is procedural, the end users can take apart this system modularly and build their own characters movements and skills to follow the needs of their workflow. This video will shock some of you long time Houdini users with some methods not commonly seen in the industry. When it comes to Houdini training, you know cmiVFX has something new for you when and where you want it.. just log in and watch.

Short Description
In this video you will learn how to set up Houdini to operate like a true Artificial Intelligence Solution by diving into some very fun and overlooked tools often forgotten about by the industry. Houdini can be your answer to much more than just Explosions and Dynamic Simulations… Come learn how to make a virtual brain station!

Chapter Descriptions

Vision Node
In the first chapter we create a custom VOP SOP that is called Vision Node. While doing this, we get a perspective view of the agent in real time with this node so that in other later chapters we can take view data from this node to process AI behaviors.

Attributes
In this portion of the video we create some custom attributes that are used for AI system like Behavior attributes and color Attributes to help make our events interesting or stimulating to the eye.

Agent Mover
This chapter is where we create another network that is called the "Agent Mover" that allows the Agents to move and turn with behavior attributes and avoid some simple obstacles.

Car Model
Now that we have a pretty stable system, we import and setup an interesting cartoon car model as well transfer animation data from the Agent Mover network to move and turn this car through out its course.

Improve Animation
This chapter's intention is to create an interesting, useful Digital Asset that is called JK_Smooth_Value to make the car agent animate more smoothly.

Finalizing
In this step we fix some bugs and take the car's color from Agent_eye network to apply to car agent character.

Rendering
and finally we create some materials and light the scene and import the cache file from the car animation to render the scene.

About The Mentor
Sadjad Rabiee is a 3D_Generalist working for various studios and companies as a VFX TD and freelancer for over 9 years. He is an expert in both Houdini and Maya for many years practicing a variety of tasks from the diverse requirements demanded from him by the industry. He is well versed in Maya and Houdini but also Nuke, Motion Builder, Combustion, Vue, Real Flow, Match Mover and many others. Sadjad is also a programmer and has worked with C , Maya API, MEL , Python , HScripts and is familiar with DirectX and OpenGL. He really enjoys experimentation and problem solving for the Visual Effects Industry.

Project Contents
All cmiVFX videos come with all the training materials you can need right from our website. No matter what time of day, your location, or how your feeling, cmiVFX will be there waiting for you!

More Information
Alternative Rendering Solution called VISION was something our team was impressed about internally. Sadjad completed this lessong quickly and with no delays all on his own. We can recommend him personally for this kind of work. It was a pure pleasure to work with him and we hope to have more from him soon.