“I eventually found myself getting more involved with the disaster side of volcanoes,” he says. He came to RealFlow as a tool to help with his field work and academic research. Stasiuk has a doctorate from Bristol University in fluid dynamics of volcanic eruptions. In fact, it got to a point that they emailed him and said, ‘Sorry but who are you, and how do you know so much about RealFlow…and, oh, would you like to beta test the next version?’ Stasiuk started using RealFlow and answering questions on the forums with such insight that RealFlow’s authors at Next Limit began noticing. Today, she is the executive producer and he the VFX supervisor at Fusion CIS. They met at a volcanic eruption in Monterrat in the late 90s. Millar is a filmmaker of 20 years’ experience, having produced or directed more than 75 TV shows, and Stasiuk holds a PhD in geophysical fluid mechanics. Mark Stasiuk and Lauren Millar are co-founders of Fusion CI Studios, a dynamic effects specialist facility that uses RealFlow extensively. Here is a second companion piece to that original story that examines the topic via the work of Fusion CI Studios. The aim was to examine the topic via one primary approach. Over time houdini will make sense if you have the patience and time to dedicate yourself.Last September we published a piece on fluid sims. The process of building tools and sims is rewarding in it’s own right.īut give it a an honest go, and don’t be too intimidated. Most of my personal projects and tinkering I don’t even bother rendering. Even with the rendering restrictions, there’s still plenty to do with Houdini. I would encourage you to give a solid three months with the free version before buying a license. That said, it’s not easy and it’s definitely not for everyone. It’s a bit faster than Realflow, and offers a lot more, even within fluid simulations. But you can do about anything with Houdini, including building your own solvers from scratch using the out-of-box tools provided, without having to use the SDK. This isn’t to say that Houdini is the best tool for everything, it isn’t. Houdini is probably the most powerful 3D application available. Houdini, from SideFX, you can export to Alembic and import in Blender, and they have a PLE!

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