Monsters vs. Aliens story

DreamWorks Animation released Monsters vs. Aliens last week. Box office earnings were quite good, reporting a $60M opener last weekend for the film.

And yes, Houdini was a part of the technology utilized. Take a look at our most recent customer story which talks about the usage of Houdini at DreamWorks!

The LA Office Opens House!

Thanks to our local LA community for coming out to the Side Effects Open House to see our new digs!

Here are a few pics of the space we now reside in ... filled with terrific people we like to keep around :).

(the long corridor between our kitchen and training room, looking down to our staff offices)

(our lobby entrance with art provided by Kevin Mack)

(front: Kim Davidson talking to Houdini artist John Courte, back: Greg Hermanovic)

(David Robert , Account Manager in SF - dangerously walking past more sweets)



(Moylene & Andy Boyd, Producer and 3D Head at Method with me saying goodbye and come again!)

Customer Highlight: Loki Visual Effects

Check out the amazing work our clients up in Toronto did using Houdini 10 fluids. Who said using beta in production was a bad idea?

Full Press Release
Watch "WenJun".

Toronto’s Loki Visual Effects combine 1000fps Phantom footage with pristine CG for a LVMH Group (Moet Chandon Hennessy) concoction called WenJun. And just in case you think the 3D liquid is all just stylish refraction – according to legend, Chinese poet Sima Xiangru was totally smitten with the widowed lady Zhou Wenjun but afraid to reveal his love. So the poet went down to the lake and played his guqin (a form of zither) so beautifully it caused the water to rise up in fanciful shapes. Agency: Bravo Asia, Director/Cameraman: Steve Gordon @ Sons & Daughters, Production Company: Cheers Films, Shanghai, VFX: Loki Visual Effects, Editor: Bob Kennedy @ Rooster, Music: Mike De Eyre @ Tin Pan.

Framestore UK Hiring!

Our longtime customer and friends over at Framestore in London are currently recruiting some Houdini FX TDs.

If you're interested, please contact ben.owen@framestore.com or look at http://careers.framestore.com/ for more information.

Also, Janet Fraser, Senior Account Executive and account manager to Framestore is available at janet@sidefx.com.

Weekly News - March 24, 2009

WE'RE HIRING!

We at Side Effects Software are currently looking for a Houdini evangelist, to work full time out of our Santa Monica offices, in California. The essence of the role is to meet with our prospective and existing customers to explain and demonstrate Houdini’s capabilities and strengths as they pertain to the production environment. Sometimes this takes place in small group meetings. It can also involve presenting to large 3D community groups. Most of interactions will take place in LA, and as such we are looking to hire someone who is already based within commute distance of Santa Monica. This person will be working very closely with the locally-based Account Manager, who will be driving the priorities.

If you are well versed in CG production and understand pipelines, enjoy and can explain technical concepts easily, and are a big fan of Houdini, this opportunity may be of interest to you. Apart from working with a great group of people, this is a stimulating role combining the visually creative with industry-leading technology and the business of production, without the demanding overtime that is so commonly found in production. Your knowledge of Houdini will grow measurably, and your understanding of CG production will be honed by a wide variety of artists and management from the “A-list” of Hollywood film studios and the cutting-edge visual effects boutiques.

Side Effects Software is one of the pioneers in the field of 3D animation and visual effects. Our software has been used in more than 300 feature films and has twice been formally recognized by the Academy of Motion Pictures, Arts and Sciences. The company’s success comes largely from its employees who are bright, thoughtful, and passionate about what they do. As an independently owned company, we foster a culture of innovation and long-standing customer relationships. We’re dedicated to making the best products to help our customers deliver superb digital content.

If you have the desired skills and experience for this position and are interested in applying please send your resume, with reference to Houdini Evangelist – Santa Monica, to recruiting@sidefx.com for consideration.

We want to fill this opening as soon as possible therefore we are only considering candidates who have permission to work in the US.

Only successful candidates will be contacted for an interview.

Peter Robbinson visits Singapore and China!

Our Senior Houdini Instructor, Peter Robbinson went on a whirlwind visit with our Asia Pacific Rep TK Ng to train classrooms in Singapore and China a few weeks ago. Here are a few highlights from his time at Nanyang Polytechnic (NYP ), where SESI has an Asia Pacific Headquarters in Singapore and Crystal Institute of Digital Education in Beijing, China.

Peter on his first day of training at NYP:

.... I focus on two main themes, the procedural workflow and how data is handled and shared thorough out houdini. The later point is not something that can be appreciated right away but needs to be upfront right from the beginning; "why are there different editors...". The data structure and hip files are essential elements that explain channel referencing and de-mystifies the syntax. Proceduralism is a bit harder to grasp at first, but they do see the potential and it usually stimulates quite a bit of "what if I want to ..." questions. Here's a quick panorama of the classroom, with the teachers on the left and in the center and some of the students who will be travelling to the LA office to become interns. TK is standing, in the blue shirt, on the left.

Peter with the ITE School of IT & Electronics and their staff:

The director of the school is on the right, Ms. Yeo Sock Tin, the young woman in the center with the white shirt is Ms. Zhou Yi Nan (she took my course last week) and teaches game programming. The young woman in the black dress is Ivy Liong Choi Yin is the Section Head of this department (oh my god I'm getting old), and the woman on the left is Ms. Wong Kim Booey, the Course Manager. The Director is very keen on adding Houdini to their curriculum and certianly Ms. Zhou did well in my class.

Peter arrives in Beijing and teaches at Crystal Institute:

I could already tell by the energy in the classroom and the attendance that this training session was going to be a good one. My worries about language problems were also dispelled. Many in the class, more or less, could follow along with my talk and TK was doing a great job with translation. He used a dictionary on his Ipod to help with words he was not familiar with and referred to the class for their examples.

Thanks Peter and TK for bringing some Houdini skills to Asia Pacific :)


Peter Robinson - Senior Trainer
TK Ng - Asia Pacific Houdini Rep (TK@sidefx.com)

Kim responds to the CG Genie Support Survey

A few weeks back someone from CG Genie posted an interested survey and article on the state of maintenance and support from various 3D applications.

We were very happy to come out with such results and feedback with satisfied customers and users, and we thanked our community for their continued support.

As a follow up, the author of this article decided to do a brief interview with our President, Kim Davidson.

A note from our Prez

Kim Davidson posted a great blog today about Houdini turning 10. There are some great videos there as well to check out about new H10 features!

fan mail

We get a lot of interesting mail sent to us at Side Effects. While most is pretty generic, every once in a while a great piece of fan mail comes in that makes us smile. Thought I would share one from someone I'll keep anonymous.

I love you guys. Seriously. (I'm not intoxicated.) Your software kicks
ass, but it's the small things that count...

You provide emails without having to resort to using 350 image slices
or 95 HTML tables. You provide intelligent hyperlinks which contain
the URL in your emails instead of the usual "click here". You provide
cryptographic checkums for file downloads. You don't spam the hell out
of me. Your file links are actual file links, rather than JavaScript
wrappers which would prevent the usage of GNU wget(1) or BSD fetch(1).
You don't use the exclamation character in extraneous ways like most
companies, e.g: "New Product!!!!!!" You guys know the correct way to
use an apostrophe. (You'd be surprised.) You provide daily software
builds. Your website isn't, last time I checked, caked with the latest
industry buzzwords like "technology" or "2.0". You provide packages of
your software for non-officially-supported platforms. Your hyperlinks
work without JavaScript.

I have no corporate agenda. I'm not sucking-up for free gifts. It's
just nice to see that there are companies who don't completely ruin
even the simplest things.

Autodesk killed Maya PLE. I'm jumping ship.

Houdini in the Watchmen

Watchmen opened this weekend in the box office at $55 million.

We've posted a terrific story on this on our homepage explaining how Intelligent Creatures used Houdini on the project.

CGSociety also did an article explaining how long time Houdini customer Sony Pictures Imageworks did the Glass Palace.



“Once we got that idea, we found we could procedurally animate them, instead of using traditional keyframe animation,” explains Travers. “We relied heavily on Houdini for the Glass Palace. It was easy to do two rings intertwining; but as soon as you add a third ring and a fourth ring it got more complicated, and when a fifth was introduced, the math just got crazy.”

Weekly News - March 5, 2009

Weekly News for the Houdini Community

• SHOUT OUT: A thanks to Craig Zerouni who recently posted a story in 3DWorld Magazine talking about Side Effects in light of the recent Softimage purchase - predicting we'll be around for a long time. (I'd provide a link, but they're not on the web yet). Look for it in Issue 113 for the month of February titled "Standing Up to Goliath" on page 31.

• MORE GALLERY: Check out the nice student work being produced and posted over at OdForce.

• HIRING HELP: A local boutique here in Los Angeles is looking for a Houdini Fur artists. Please contact community@sidefx.com if you're interested.

Houdini use at Guerilla Games

We just posted a great story on how Houdini was used on Killzone 2 at Guerilla Games in Holland.

Check it out!