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Getting Started With Look Development in Houdini

Texturing & Shading Using Maya, Substance, Houdini & Redshift With Brent Le Blanc

Description

Houdini is fast becoming one of the most essential tools for the entire pipeline in film and feature animation production. This workshop covers the essential skills to get started with texturing and shading using the industry-standard tools Maya, Substance Painter, Substance Designer, and Houdini with Redshift. Brent Le Blanc, a Texturing & Shading Artist with over 10 years of experience in film and feature animation, guides you through the complete process of look development in this 2-hour workshop.


Brent begins with creating a reusable look development kit that will be helpful with all your future projects to easily access HDRIs, Cameras, and Macbeth Chart. He then details the UV stage in Maya, which he’s found to hold a level of importance that is often overlooked. Substance Designer is also introduced, revealing how it can create powerful custom tools that can be used in Substance Painter for smart material creation before Brent demonstrates texturing in Substance Painter, sharing his industry-proven, non-destructive methods for quickly polishing assets with highly modular materials.


Scene assembly follows as the next stage of the workshop, where Brent uncovers how to use the different contexts inside Houdini that are essential for look development. The final segment finishes out with light creation and various other essential tips and tricks for rendering in Houdini using Redshift.


This workshop offers techniques that have been learned over 10 years working as a professional texturing and shading artist with an emphasis on procedural and non-destructive workflows. Included with the workshop are various project files, including the featured Chest model HI and LO, Painter file, and Designer tool, to help get you started.


Duration: 2h 20m

Format: HD 1920x1080

Brent Le Blanc

Look Development Artist

Brent Le Blanc is a Senior Design Technologist at Amazon with over 15 years of experience in animation and visual effects. He specializes in procedural CG art and environment creation, combining technical innovation with artistic vision to produce high-quality digital worlds.


Brent has worked with leading studios including DreamWorks Animation, Pixar Animation Studios, and Digital Domain, contributing to films such as The Bad Guys, The Croods: A New Age, Spies in Disguise, Ferdinand, Ice Age: Collision Course, and The Peanuts Movie. His work emphasizes procedural techniques and immersive environments, blending artistry with cutting-edge technology.

  • Brent is an outstanding artist and fantastic colleague. His love for creating shaders always showed in the beautiful work he added to our films. And he generously shared his skills and insights with everyone around him. All around he's an A+ human being.

    - Baaron Schulte
    Environments Material Lead at Blue Sky Studios

  • When I started as a matte painter at DreamWorks, the department had been using Houdini for a few years. I had to learn it in a hurry. Brent was my go-to guy for answering questions and steering me in the right direction. Thanks to his guidance and support, I was up and running in Houdini in no time.

    - Brian LaFrance
    Digital Matte Painter at Netlfix Animation Studios