Creating a Toothbrush and Glass With NURBS in Houdini

Helge Maus covers setting up a proper Houdini project structure and creating a NURBS toothbrush and Glass.

Helge Maus of PixelTrain has some pretty fantastic learning resources. A new series called “Houdini Practice Hour” is one for people who are brand-spanking new to Side FX Houdini. 

Setting Up a Houdini FX Project Structure.

The first part of the tutorial covers working with Houdini projects and best practices for setting up a proper structure. Maus covers the importance of the project structure and the Houdini variables $JOB and $HOME. It’s a great practice to learn, making sure that paths will not break when moving your project from another machine or to a render farm.

Modeling the Glass with NURBS

The second part of the tutorial shows how to create the glass for the toothbrush scene. Maus talks about NURBS curves inside of Houdini, how to work with them, and how to convert them to polygon lines. The tutorial also covers how to revolve the glass and then make final adjustments in the polygon world.