June 07th 2021 01:00:04am

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.

This week I am breaking down my entry for day 04 Escape. This entry did not win, but the techniques used within the build can be useful. This week I go over procedural modeling of a cartoon jail, complete with a simple animated character. I’ll go over importing your animation into vellum for added movement, how to reshape a box with VEX to create curved surfaces, manipulate curves using the @pscale attribute, and much more.

Some highlight points in the video:
• 00:00:00 – Entry overview
• 00:02:19 – Jail roof build
• 00:10:02 – Jail floor build
• 00:11:32 – Jail sign build
• 00:19:18 – Jail roof center light
• 00:20:05 – Jail roof lanterns
• 00:24:25 – Jail bars build
• 00:35:05 – Ground with hole build
• 00:40:42 – Grass build
• 00:50:01 – Blob character build
• 00:58:41 – Blob character animation
• 00:59:25 – Vellum collider build
• 01:00:07 – Vellum simulation
• 01:06:09 – Transfer sim to high res character
• 01:09:03 – Cyc build
• 01:10:49 – Camera settings
• 01:12:42 – Lighting
• 01:15:54 – Render breakouts
• 01:21:02 – Redshift3D materials
• 01:24:48 – Render settings
• 01:26:21 – Brief expression code explanation

Mardini. If you have not heard of it, is 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.

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.