For this project, Nymus3D was mainly looking for people with a mix of technical and creative capabilities, which is a good description of students from my course- Art & Technologies. Overall, as an ANT student, I believe I have some understanding of programming, 3d and design, but not enough to call myself a specialist in any of those. I will use this blog post to introduce my prior knowledge, which helped me in this project and knowledge from a different field of study I had to obtain in order to participate effectively.

Prior knowledge based on my own field of study


3D modelling

In the first year of ANT, we had a course called 3D modelling in which we were introduced to Maya. We learned the basics of representing a physical body using a collection of vertices, edges, or faces in 3D space. Also a bit about lighting and rendering.

Virtual Reality and Interactive Content

Later on, in the second year, we got to work with Unity, got familiar with what a game engine is and the way it works. We learned some scripting with C# and started understanding physics. Also during Interactive Content, we created a 3d environment.

Processing

In the first year, we used Processing, which is a flexible software for visual programming and a language for learning how to code within the context of the visual arts that is based on Java. Sometimes Houdini really reminds me of Processing even though they are so different only because just like in Houdini you see so visually the results of your vex code, in Processing also you immediately receive visual feedback as a result of programming.

Storytelling

In ANT we had several subjects which helped up develop our storytelling skills. They were you present the story to get the attention of the audience, how to structure it, how to generate emotions form your story and more were things I was familiar with before and could help me have a vision for our final video.

Visual Design

After 3 years in my study and an internship in Design, I believe I have developed a sense of aesthetics and colours and a design eye in general. This helps me a lot in the project for creating minimalistic, abstract patterns that have the potential to look really pleasing for the eye when properly rendered.

 

Explored new fields of study

 

Mathematics

The patterns I am recreating are based on strict mathematical formulas so in order to understand what I am doing and how they work I have to get some mathematical insights, which is not related to my field of study.

Botanics

One of my patterns is the Phyllotaxis spirals of the sunflower head. In order to recreate my pattern, I need to also look at how Phyllotaxis spirals are formed and where they are found in nature which goes into the field of Botanics, a completely new but interesting field for me.

Main Sources:
Przemyslaw Prusinkiewicz , Aristid Lindenmayer , The Algorithmic Beauty of Plants, First Edition edition (March 27, 1996)

Articles from:  https://www.mathsisfun.com

Articles from: https://www.livescience.com

Roger V. Jean, Phyllotaxis: A Systemic Study in Plant Morphogenesis, January 28, 1994

Houdini

As for Houdini, I am having a hard time deciding if it fits into my field of study or a new field since the capabilities of this software are enormous and there is a lot of different tasks that one can take over in it. Also, it is quite an innovative software like no other I have worked with so far.

I believe that my prior knowledge that I mentioned before help me get some concepts easily in Houdini, but most of the time what I learn is completely new information and I need to spend time and effort to process it.

Let’s take VEX as an example, which is the main programming language I use in Houdini to make my patterns. I personally used Vex for modelling both of my patterns so basically, they are generated by code, which is totally different than what I used to do in Maya.

Like I mentioned before I have some experience with C# for writing scripts for Unity, but Vex is not a scripting language. VEX is also not an alternative to scripting, but rather a smaller, more efficient general purpose language for writing shaders and custom nodes.

VEX is loosely based on the C language, which I don’t have experience in.

So when I reflect on what I did in Houdini so far now I would say that Houdini is quite a new and challenging field for me and I learned a lot.

To conclude, this project has been a great opportunity to use and build upon already existing skills and knowledge of mine and learn about new fields of study and especially about an amazing and complex procedural modelling software such as Houdini.

 

Main Sources of information and practise for Houdini:

Entagma
Pluralsight
Vimeo