From Restaurant graphics to Peter Rabbit - the lessons I learned in 18 years of CG

Now that Matt's career is of drinking age, it seems a good time to reflect on what he has done and what has been learned. Matt will to run through every project he has worked on (memory and footage permitting), and extract a useful lesson from each. For example, don't use paintfx for smoke simulation. Debugging ncloth skin sims at 3am is ill-advised. Know that the show always gets done (eventually). Pretending to be the director can sometimes end up with you actually being the director.

Houdini - I didn't know it could do that!

Despite the massive increase in Houdini usage in the last 3 years, it still has a stereotype of being 'that difficult package for making explosions for films'. This workshop will show that Houdini is so much more than that. Matt has introduced Houdini to modellers, matte painters, lighters, compositors, animators, fine artists, high school students, architects, VR studios. Everyone finds a use for Houdini they didn't expect, and find it much easier to learn than they assumed.

2 hours will be devoted to teaching beginners the 'zen' of houdini, how it differs from other 3d applications, the core concepts that are important to grasp that then make the rest of the package much more intuitive.

The rest of the workshop will be full of examples of Houdini being used in novel ways, hopefully to inspire attendees to suggest ideas on the day, that Matt will aim to create live. There's lots of tutorials and videos out there showing you which button to press in Houdini to do a specific task, but there's no benefit to attending a workshop like that (but Matt will definitely show you where the button is). This workshop provides the chance to meet a Houdini cult-member who loves to be challenged with weird ideas, and show how Houdini's versatility is unmatched by any other 3d software.

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