Episode 7- Mugs (I'm out of Star Wars Puns)

I tried something different this week.

I think it may be a good way to learn at a faster pace than working through entire tutorial series at a time.

Pros to working with a full tutorial series:
Comprehensive overlook of a concept and more “Top-level” knowledge of how to do things as opposed to the nitty-gritty button pushing to accomplish a single effect or task.
Cons to working with a full tutorial series:
Lose track of a concept and the entire project comes to a grinding halt until you can backtrack to fully understand the connected parts of the whole.

This is all to say, I’m going to tryout learning through shorter/more contained tutorials. I know, it’s not exactly a good way to learn by taking random chunks of information in at a time. Quite honestly, it’s more interesting to learn this way and gives me many different perspectives of workflows different people use in Houdini. I think when all of your information comes from one place you’re seriously limiting the type of learning you do.

Plus none of these folks will teach me fun stuff like water sims until waaaaaaaaay later in the series.

Just joking.

Sort of.

So cups. This week I learned how to model a cup. It sounds boring, but this was actually a really interesting look into how to model using a flat circle shape and like 4-5 extrudes to create and refine a 3D cup. Basically, by modeling in this way you can choose to create groups from certain edges and reference those group names to do specific tasks involving just a single set you’ve defined. If you look closely at the rim of the glass in the photos below you can see that concept in action. I defined the edges of the extrudes and added a bevel to them.
So this is still some pretty low-level basic modeling shit, but it’s super interesting. If I had started with a primitive 3D shape from the pallet menu, like a tube, I wouldn’t have been able to define those shape groups of the edges and round them off as easily. It would probably look more like someone took a knife and sliced right across the top of the cup rather than the roundy-top. Plus I have a ton of control of said roundy-top and its roundativity. (It’s my new made up word, jeez, get off my back.)

It’s an interesting approach to modeling that’s a little different from what I’m used to, but I kinda like it.

Up until this point, I’ve been trashing my project files because I’m just following along with tutorials and not making anything for myself, but this time I deviated from the tutorial pretty dramatically to create something more “my own”, so I hit that little save icon on this badboy. Keep an eye out, this little guy may make a comeback at some point. Maybe once I get good with some of the more complex concepts I’ve be able to export a clip with water pouring into the glass, who knows?

Later nerds.
Jake-out.