April 04th 2021 09:50:35am

Mardini. If you have not heard of it, it’s a daily art challenge put on by Side Fx, the makers of Houdini. It’s 31 days of chaos and creativity. The main goal is to create a unique animation or still image based on the topics provided. Each week is a new category and each day a new related topic.

Taking on this challenge requires much effort, creativity, and just plain old perseverance. The spirit of the challenge is to design the concept, build it, and render it in a 24 hour period. You can of course just focus on specific days/topics if you like, but you gain a nice little Houdini swag bag if you complete all 31 days on time. Something they call the Iron Heart.

Each day three top entries for animation and still images are chosen by judges, and posted on a leader board throughout the challenge. Many talented artists join and make some amazing pieces. It’s great fun, and the community is very supportive of each other along the way.

This year I was fortunate enough to have five wins during the challenge. I took two 2nd place, and three 3rd place wins.

I decided to make breakdown / tutorials of all of these winning pieces, as well as some of my other entries that I enjoyed making. Even if they didn’t win. Today I’m starting with my first win for day 14, Ancient from Worlds week.

If you are looking to dive straight into the build and bypass the tutorial, you can purchase the project file with the Gumroad button on the right side of this page. One thing to note is that I did use my FFX Align To Curve HDA in this build, which is a paid HDA available through Orbolt here: FFX Align To Curve

You can use a native alternative which I do mention in the tutorial and even dropped down next to my node in the project file as well. It will just require you to mess with the native node to try and match mine.

Some highlight points of the breakdown video:
• 00:00:00 – About Mardini
• 00:11:56 – Vimeo URL / Fendra Fx
• 00:14:35 – References and concept
• 00:18:30 – Houdini file path parameter expressions
• 00:22:48 – Gem build
• 00:32:28 – Gem cracks build
• 00:38:26 – Gem colorizing
• 00:45:48 – Gem case build
• 1:05:00 – Feather build
• 1:17:19 – Feather PDG / Top Network
• 1:21:39 – Gold map attribute creation
• 1:32:38 – Necklace build
• 1:51:23 – Cyc build
• 1:54:26 – Redshift lighting setup
• 1:57:35 – Redshift materials breakdown
• 2:06:43 – Redshift render output settings
• 2:10:40 – Quick Redshift IPR render of a frame

Here is a compilation video of all of my entries. I will be releasing tutorials for all of my winning entries and select non-winning entries. If you see one you’d like to see broken down, let me know.

Want to see more new tutorials? Please donate and/or purchase products to help support Fendra Fx. Spread the word. Tell your friends, and their friends. More ideas are in the works and all financial support is greatly appreciated. Thanks.