Vancouver trip - November 2010

Hey Vancouver, thanks for the snow. It was great to see all our users and meet with various clients in the area. We were there for the VES Vancouver CAVE event at District 319.


As usual, VHUG had a great meeting, and we learned a bunch of new applications for using Houdini’s proceduralism.

Here’s a few photos of the Vancouver users who meet every few months. Definitely check up on their Facebook page to learn more!

Some users: Leo Chan (head of VHUG), Peter Bowmar, Caleb Howard, Georg Duemlein, Greg Massie, Ivan DeWolf, Carlos Lemus

Hey - here’s John Courte (Senior Houdini Artist) and Richard Hamel (VP Sales/Mktg) in front of the famous Steamclock in Gaslamp District!

October Roundup

Hey thanks to everyone who came out to the SF Usergroup at PIXAR last week. It was a great success and we had almost 100 attendees come see the presentations from Image Movers Digital and PIXAR :).

Here are a few photos:

Xray from Image Movers Digital presents his Houdini and Massive workflow

Bay Area users watch - and some came in from Vancouver and Utah!

Last week, Side Effects also sponsored the 2nd VES Production Summit in Marina Del Rey.  Here's a link to a Variety article re-capping some of its highlights.

Houdini Usergroup in Northern California

Hey everyone,

We'll be hosting a Houdini usergroup meeting with great presentations on October 20, 2010 at the PIXAR campus.

Please come here to RSVP!

od[challenge] 2010 is Live!

Our friends over at OdForce have launched a new od[challenge].

Check out the details here!

Post SIGGRAPH 2010 Roundup

We had an amazing time this year at SIGGRAPH 2010 in Los Angeles. Our Education Team had a booth on the show floor and met with loads of people eager to learn or teach Houdini at their schools.

We even held an education mixer at our Santa Monica Training space and had many attendees roll through to meet with various staff from Side Effects both LA and Toronto facilities.

All this was capped off by an amazing event to to launch our latest and greatest version of Houdini.

Lots of thanks again to our lovely presenters:

• Marion Spates and Christopher Leone from Motion Theory presenting on World of Color (Disney commercial)
• Jeremy Hampton from Digital Domain presenting on Percy Jackson
• Spencer Lueders from Framestore NY presenting on Salt.

Thanks to everyone who came out for the Houdini 11 Launch event as well, we loved getting to hang with our talented users and fans. And the performance from Fire Groove made it all a wonderful celebration :).

Spencer Lueders presenting on SALT

mingling around and meeting other Houdini nerds

H11 and SIGGRAPH 2010!

It's been a while, I know. I owe a major blog update.

But for now, let's get excited about the news around Houdini 11! Check out the sneak peak from Kim on our site as well as a list of all the new stuff in there.

We'll be going Gold with Houdini 11 just before SIGGRAPH this year in Los Angeles... which means we'll have to celebration as well :)



Come join us for a great event at the Cooper Design Building in downtown Los Angeles on July 27th (just blocks away from the conference center).

Here's more information on the Launch Event as well as details for our Education Booth and presence at SIGGRAPH this year.

Don't forget to RSVP!!

PS: If you're currently a commercial customer current on AUP, you'll be getting access to Houdini 11 Beta in just a few short days.

Leo Chan and Ziggy at GDX and SCAD

SCAD Atlanta and SCAD and the GDX in Savannah all got a great dose of Houdini from EA's Leo Chan and SESI's Ziggy Ostertag, with Aliza covering both bases. Here's a synopsis:



Ziggy and Clark at SCAD Atlanta studio






SCAD grad students listening to
Ziggy's Intro to Houdini













Leo and Debra Fowler of SCAD field
questions at GDX












Leo introduces a whole new generation
to Brian Eno's
"Music for Airports",
via Houdini.