Digital
Assets
In a typical
production environment, scenes are built up of varous assets such
as sets, props, characters, lights and cameras. The management of
these elements can be a daunting task as these assets mix and match
between different shots. Many artists will be working with the assets
and they must be maintained throughout the production process.
Houdini lets
technical directors build assets as custom tools, each with their
user interface, then store these in Operator Type Libraries (OTLs)
that can be put into the production pipeline for use by artists
and animators.
Creating these
assets is possible in Houdini at all levels. You can have a custom
SOP, SHOP, POP, or COP. You can even set up custom VOPs. In the
following lessons the focus is on Digital Assets at the Object level,
although the concepts are similar for custom tools throughout Houdini.
Object-level Assets can also contain other network types using the
network-within-network capabilities.
To learn about
Digital Assets, you can work through the following lessons:
Working
with Digital Assets - In
this lesson, you will install an OTL then work with its custom tools
to explore what the artist sees when working with a Houdini digital
asset.
Creating
an Object-level Asset
- In
this lesson, you will create the same tool you were working with
in the previous lesson. You will learn how to package up the related
Operators then create an Operator Type and build the custom user
interface.
Promoting
Parameters - In the last lesson, you explored different
ways of building a custom digital asset interface by promoting parameters.
This lesson offers a quick list of all the methods available for
promoting parameters.
Promoting
Handles - This lesson offers a list of the methods
available for quickly promoting handles to a digital asset.
Interacting
with Digital Assets
- Using a digital asset character as an example, you will explore
how to interact with the digital asset and its nested controls.
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