http://www.thegnomonworkshop.com/tutorials/introduction-to-pyro-fx-in-houdini-volume-1

Learn about the powerful features in Houdini 18.5 and discover how to take advantage of the fast and efficient SOP-level Sparse Pyro tools for production-quality FX. From creating realistic smoke to a believable campfire, Volume 1 of Alasgar Hasanov’s two-volume workshop walks through the production workflows needed to create a variety of simulations.  Alasgar is a Senior FX Artist with over 6 years of experience working with Houdini. He provides an in-depth overview of all the new Source nodes and workflows along with a breakdown of the Pyro Solver settings and options you need to know for different types of pyro FX sims.  The workshop offers several case studies for artists to follow along. Starting with a small-scale pyro FX project involving some wispy smoke/dry ice FX, artists will learn how to create a lightly smoking source and a dry-ice effect source. For a larger-scale pyro FX case study, Alasgar then demonstrates how to recreate a realistic large-scale smoke simulation along with some efficient methods for matching references. The simulation processes are instructed as well as some interesting ways to render the final results.

Gnomon – Creating Sci-Fi Keyframe Concept Art with Sebastien Hue

http://www.thegnomonworkshop.com/tutorials/creating-sci-fi-keyframe-concept-art

When you’re tasked with creating keyframe concept art for the art department of a feature film or video game, you’re more than likely going to need to bring a scene to life quickly, and with photorealistic results. Sebastien Hue is a Concept Illustrator with credits including Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare, who shares his complete workflow across 5 hours, from developing an initial idea to creating an establishing shot that’s worthy of inclusion in a sci-fi movie or game cinematic.  This workshop details Sebastien’s entire pipeline for creating keyframe concept art and focuses on efficiency throughout. He shares how Cinema 4D can be used alongside Photoshop to speed up the design process and help with achieving cinematic results. Knowledge of Photoshop is recommended since this video tutorial takes an intermediate-level approach with more of a focus on artistic exploration, covering the fundamentals of composition, depth, mood, lighting, and industrial design. While Cinema 4D is Sebastien’s 3D software of choice, any 3D software can be used to follow along.

Gnomon Workshop - Creating High-Resolution Custom Trees Using SpeedTree

http://www.thegnomonworkshop.com/tutorials/creating-high-resolution-custom-trees-using-speedtree

Discover how to generate complex-looking trees using SpeedTree and Houdini, with this intermediate-level tutorial by Jean-Michel Bihorel. Starting from simple generating rules before deep-diving into more advanced areas of tree generation in SpeedTree and Houdini, Jean-Michel teaches every step needed to generate a hero tree asset — perfect for use in a cinematic.  Throughout the workshop, Jean-Michel shares how to create a mixture of hand-drawn branches extended by procedural generators, as well as how to use the mesh forces for realistic results. He also reveals how to set up and export a leaf as a point cloud in Houdini in order to manage a more optimized setup, as well as great procedural control over the leaf geometry generation and placement based on the direction of the sun.  For those that don’t want to export their tree assets to Houdini, Jean-Michel also provides guidance for exporting your trees into other software — in this case, Maya — along with advice for how to get your shaders working in other software packages.

Gnomon – Storyboarding Techniques - Creating a Fight Sequence

http://www.thegnomonworkshop.com/tutorials/storyboarding-techniques-creating-a-fight-sequence

Learn the art of storyboarding with this drawing-intensive workshop by Rembert Montald, a storyboard artist at Riot Games. In this 3.5-hour workshop, Rembert shares his process for creating and choreographing a visually pleasing storyboard from scratch, from the initial drawing through to an animatic of the final sequence.  Using a fight sequence as the story, Rembert teaches how to lead the eye through your shots, and details his various shorthand techniques for detailing characters and action poses quickly and effectively.  This workshop is intended for anyone with an interest in storyboarding, visual storytelling, and drawing. The lessons taught are aimed at intermediate and expert-level artists and aim to prove industry insights for those working in games and films, including techniques for pacing yourself, setting the expectations, and understanding working standards.

Gnomon – Storyboarding Techniques - Creating a Polished Animatic

http://www.thegnomonworkshop.com/tutorials/storyboarding-techniques-creating-a-polished-animatic

Learn how to turn your rough storyboard sequences into fully colored animated videos with this new tutorial by Rembert Montald, a Storyboard Artist at Riot Games.  Following on from his Storyboarding Techniques: Creating a Fight Sequence workshop, Rembert shares his professional techniques for turning a rough animatic into a final animatic. Focusing on the first 16 seconds of his fight sequence, he gives an in-depth explanation of his thought process when approaching storyboarding for animation. His lecture includes a discussion of the importance of camera placement, as the way a camera moves can be used to great advantage — especially when working with dynamic shots.  This is an advanced drawing workshop; however, Rembert’s approach to teaching is to make his techniques inclusive for all levels and abilities. This workshop aims to empower artists with the confidence to create their own animations, whether for showcasing in a portfolio, using to secure a new job, or pitch an idea to a stakeholder.

Gnomon – Environment Design for Virtual Production in Unreal Engine 4

http://www.thegnomonworkshop.com/tutorials/environment-design-for-virtual-production-in-unreal-engine-4

Virtual production is an emerging filmmaking method that uses real-time rendering to combine live-action footage with CG, first used on films like The Lion King and The Mandalorian TV series. In this 2-hour workshop, Vladimir Somov, former Principal Cinematics Artist on Assassin’s Creed, For Honor, and Far Cry, shares the core concepts and techniques required for creating Virtual Production-ready environment art using Unreal Engine. He walks through the entire pipeline of creating the exterior and interior sets of an ancient temple — an environment that allows for the exploration of two scenarios for lighting and mood, so you can learn how to set up and tell a story with lighting and post-processing for different environments.  The workshop begins with a lesson on understanding how to work with references and shows how to create a custom construction kit and a trim material. You will learn how to set up Unreal Engine, what project settings and plugins to use and why, as well as how to organize and structure Unreal projects. Vladimir provides both practical and theoretical advice on effective and believable set dressing and lighting, and offers techniques to profile and optimize performance with tools like Deep Learning Super Sampling (DLSS) from Nvidia. The workflow also includes a look inside the techniques used for capturing a basic cinematic with an animated character and a virtual hand-held camera operated by using a smartphone as a tracker.

Gnomon – Introduction to Katana

http://www.thegnomonworkshop.com/tutorials/introduction-to-katana

Katana is a powerful lighting and look-development application used across the globe by many studios, both large and small. Learning Katana independently or setting up a project from scratch can bring about many challenges. This 4-hour workshop by Senior Lighting & Look Dev TD Taeyoung Kim walks through all the basics of Katana and explains how to create a lighting template that can be used for your own shots.  This detailed workshop covers how to create simple yet useful tools inside Katana that will improve your workflow. Using the lighting template that is created through the workshop, Taeyoung then lights a simple shot and renders it out with AOVs using Arnold. He also shares his industry tips for setting up accurate lighting using an HDRi and a backplate. Using renders from one of the shots, Taeyoung then shares how to work with the AOVs and pull everything together in Nuke.  By completing this workshop, you will develop a sound understanding of how to work in Katana as well as how to render images that you can take into any compositing software.

Gnomon - Introduction to Pyro FX in Houdini - Volume 1

http://www.thegnomonworkshop.com/tutorials/introduction-to-pyro-fx-in-houdini-volume-1

Learn about the powerful features in Houdini 18.5 and discover how to take advantage of the fast and efficient SOP-level Sparse Pyro tools for production-quality FX. From creating realistic smoke to a believable campfire, Volume 1 of Alasgar Hasanov’s two-volume workshop walks through the production workflows needed to create a variety of simulations.  Alasgar is a Senior FX Artist with over 6 years of experience working with Houdini. He provides an in-depth overview of all the new Source nodes and workflows along with a breakdown of the Pyro Solver settings and options you need to know for different types of pyro FX sims.  The workshop offers several case studies for artists to follow along. Starting with a small-scale pyro FX project involving some wispy smoke/dry ice FX, artists will learn how to create a lightly smoking source and a dry-ice effect source. For a larger-scale pyro FX case study, Alasgar then demonstrates how to recreate a realistic large-scale smoke simulation along with some efficient methods for matching references. The simulation processes are instructed as well as some interesting ways to render the final results.