Modeling & Rendering a Quartz Crystal in Houdini 16

For more resources please visit www.entagma.com
00:14 - What makes a quartz crystal look like a quartz crystal?
01:34 - Building the basic crystal shape
02:48 - Adding detail to the edges
05:00 - Adding internal fractures
08:54 - Adding inclusions
10:54 - Building the crystal shader
15:07 - Shading the inclusions
16:00 - Setting up subsurface scattering
18:13 - Epilogue
Download project file - including .hip, .hdr and .ae files: www.dropbox.com/s/vhpcvdyf308...

[@kartikeshukla9041]

I don’t understand why do you guys don’t have a bigger audience, such high quality content deserves more!!

[@losseven155]

yeah exactly

[@user-he1ss4gz8v]

Maybe it's because using Houdini is most widely considered a self abusement to the majority of digital artists

[@snhly9120]

李䶮 the abuse only makes you stronger mate!!

[@Bizarro69]

Let's been honest, Houdini is a lot of work and little fun if you just want to make stuff, those who excel at it already have a mind that integrates the technical with the creative. Most artists operate heavily on the creative side. In short; Houdini is a pain in the ass.

[@PaulanerStudios]

@@Bizarro69 As someone who comes from programming and has only used Blender for anything 3d... Houdini gets my pants wet man. It is soooo good. If u know how to program and have a decent understanding of how the geometry/shading pipeline and solvers work on an implementation level, it’s the opposite of a pain in the ass. Blender is the opposite of parametric in almost every aspect. Blender is the opposite of Houdini. And it... for a large part... is a pain in the ass 😅 Houdini can’t be a pain in the ass... ok, maybe the naming of the nodes...

[@FXSoup]

For anyone having trouble with the large inclusions not getting created, there exists a random combination of the smaller first inclusions that, when passed through the first boolean, results in a mesh that looks correct but is in a state where the second boolean fails to create interior geometry. To fix this, swap the boolean order, first shatter the crystal, then subtract the smaller inclusions. You should now have interior geometry for the main shatter and it will render properly.

[@lm96gatling]

much appreciated, you saved me a lot of headaches

[@FXSoup]

@@lm96gatling No problem, it drove me nuts for a little bit. Glad it helped.

[@hayden7524]

Hey man I think I'm on the part you are talking about but still don't understand completely

[@FXSoup]

@@hayden7524 When you display the output of the first boolean and you see small inclusions, but then move down the tree and display the output of the second boolean and there is no output then you are experiencing the issue I ran into. You will only encounter this if you follow the EXACT dimensions and decimals used in the tutorial. If the second boolean output has large inclusions displayed in your viewport then whatever rendering problem you're seeing is coming from something else in your node tree.

[@stephaniedaly2326]

This is amazing I was looking for some help on shaders for clear crystals and this was great and explained a lot :) I'm going to build an Amethyst crystal with the help of this tut, Thank you!

[@GuilhermeMaia100]

Seriously, this video makes me feel crappy. How can a human do this type of thing? Something this advanced didn't exist even in my dreams! Man, you have all my respect!

[@campbellwinslow6986]

yeah I get that too. especially when you try and follow along, but nothing works (I think using houdini 18 was a mistake lol)

[@121peppermint]

sharing your appreciation for crystals=) hope this helps! Category 1 cubic: garnet, fluorite, lapis lazuli, pyrite, or sodalite The cubic system is characterized by axes at right angles to each other. Category 2 hexagonal: calcite, tourmaline, emerald, or ruby The hexagonal system is characterized by its three-dimensional hexagons. Category 3 tetragonal: apophyllite, vesuvian, apatite, or aquamarine This system is characterized by three axes at right angles of which only the two lateral axes are equal. Category 4 trigonal: amethyst, aventurine, quartz, calcite, or carnelian This system is characterized by three equal and equally inclined axes. Category 5 orthorhombic crystal system.: aragonite, celestite, danburite, iolite, or peridot This system is characterized by three unequal axes at right angles. Category 6 monoclinic crystal system: howlite, kunzite, malachite, moonstone, or orthoclase. This system contains three vectors of unequal lengths forming a rectangular prism with a parallelogram as its base.

[@DjTasteless]

the most realistic I ve ever seen as a 3d model...

[@nikamednessa]

Thank you so much! Its wonderful!

[@Jesseweijer]

Very interesting! Thank you.

[@emepicuta3899]

Thanks for your awesome vids and tuts. Is it possible to somehow make the interior pattern of the cristal "breakable" as if it was RBD?

[@all_about_maya]

Very helpful

[@virtual_mess]

please upload in 60fps, so i can watch your tutorials in 0.5 speed without sound stuttering :d

[@sg19803]

volumevop1 does not have "input number 2". In volumevop1 you have to promote input 2

[@eclairesrhapsodos5496]

Fingers crossed lol. Like blender user I always save before any heavy operations ahah

[@AlexeiX1]

How would I go about exporting this crystal into another software? I tried exporting as obj, alembics etc, but the geometry that gets imported is all broken

[@eclairesrhapsodos5496]

Try to convert to vdb volume in hoodini + smooth vdb and then back from vdb to polygon, might give a trick. Maybe exporting as USD be having less artifacts...

[@hitta750]

I donwloaded the project and the eta is 20 minutes to render with a 3070 and ryzen 3950x? Am I doing something wrong? The render in the video is like 2 minutes?

[@Entagma]

Hi Jon, the render sequence in this video is a time lapse. 20 minutes doesn't sound too bad. Keep in mind Mantra is a) not really fast and b) a purely CPU based engine, so your 3070 doesn't contribute. Cheers, Mo

[@nagatoRL]

Hi, I'm sorry to bother. But, I've followed as it is and I'm not getting the 6:40 type. I'm just getting a cube😣Someone, help!

[@abidemi-ibitoye]

Struggling to recreate the material in Redshift.

[@zhounanzhou2272]

This teaching is great, but for me as a beginner, I don’t know how to export this crystal model obj, hope to reply to me

[@ujulspins]

bro, just google it - there's several answers about that

[@fidofx2189]

please do this but with Karma

[@philippwelsing9108]

I'd sell half a kidney to see this exact tutorial for H19, using the full power of Octane. MO?? :)

[@jtk8337]

Hey, can you do a prism light scattering simulation? :)

[@eclairesrhapsodos5496]

Do by yourself :) Use dispersion in render engines with wavelength (Spectral Ray Tracing). I highly recommend use "Photon Mapping" sampling or "unbiased path tracing", in Photon Mapping most accurate is SPPM - Stochastic Progressive Photon Mapping (use 100 Million with 1000 passes, its progressive so you can stop rendering when its be looking good without any damage), CPPM is great but its available only in Mitsuba render and its pain. Octane has PT+PM, Direct Light+PM | Redshift has PT+PM | Maxwell has Unbiased PT | YafaRay has SPPM, PT+PM, Direct Light+PM, Pure PM with ability to save calculated Photon Map | Luxcore has Metropolis Light Transport (MLT on CPU only), Biderectional PT (fast but bad for complex caustics + CPU only) + PM, PT+PM with ability to save Photon Map, but it don't has passes so it calculated only once and limit is 100 Million photons with additional settings. Ordinary PM calculated only once while SPPM can calculate 100 Million photons with each pass (unlimited amount of passes), on my CPU - I5 9400f and I7 3770k it usually takes up to 4-5 hours in 1080p for still image in YafaRay and Luxcore (GPU slow too), best solution is Unbiased Path Tracing but its slow as hell and SPPM, everything else be having low quality caustics and dispersion... ordinary PM is good unless you have complex caustics - its be not enough photons (even max 100 Million) and caustics be very blurry, ordinary Path Tracing will take forever to render caustics and a lot of rays just miss + for fireflies everywhere (might take few hours or up to whole day for still image on GPU depending on render), Unbiased PT never miss rays and its most accurate rendering method so its best for any case but it veeeeery slow. My favourite is Maxwell, Luxcore, YafaRay, Octane. I prefer to use diamond like material - IOR 2.417 + Dispersion 0.044 not sure what value of dispersion and IOR in glass prism...

[@samorona3d224]

Hello, I'm using houdini 18 and I seem not to be able to get Input Numer 2 after connecting the Float to the Frequency, please help

[@armandsfreibergs4069]

same problem here

[@roneld23]

for some reason, the video seems to skip over promoting the parm. If you middle-mouse click on the second input of the multiply VOP, you should see "Promote Parameter" which will automatically add a parameter VOP. (if you right click on the little green tab after selecting "Promote Parameter", you should be able to click "Expose nodes" to see what's created.")

[@samorona3d224]

@@roneld23 hey thanks, will check that out

[@TroubleShotVFX]

@@roneld23 It's stuff like this that make Houdini such a pain the ass. You can't assume anything when teaching it. So the second a line of code or a parameter is missed the entire thing falls apart. I can't tell you how many time I've hit a brick wall in a tutorial because the VEX codes doesn't work for no reason.

[@itsriverdavis]

Can you do this in Blender?

[@TheParasone]

Tutorial is outdated, you cant use the "Mountain" node anymore as it is deprecated and replaced by attribute noise. You will have to figure out how to get the look using this node on yourself.

[@IstyManame]

I definitely can use the mountain node in the latest 20.0.547 production build are you sure that's the case?

[@ms.liragrut8222]

not enough memory))