Renee Marsland - Brain Catalogue

Since my workplace often ran their 3D tools on Linux machines, I decided to set-up a "linux box" and install Houdini (among other things) at home. Obviously installing software onto a linux computer is different to the quick and easy installation process on a Windows PC. So here are the steps I took to get it up and running on Ubuntu: 1. Download the installation file from the SideFX website . 2. Run the following on the .tar file you just downloaded      (the version I had downlaoded was houdini 16.5) : tar xvzf houdini-16.5.378-linux_x86_64_gcc4.8.tar.gz 3. Then run: sudo ./houdini-16.5.378-linux_x86_64_gcc4.8/houdini.installer 4. Once you have run through the installation, in order to get the 'houdini' command to work in                terminal you need to setup the houdini environment variables, such as the path to the Houdini              binaries (as stated in the houdini readme).     In order to do this you must cd into the following dir

So as mentioned in my prior post, this blog exists primarily as a place to help catalogue and talk through all things I am attempting to teach myself. And the major thing I am trying to teach myself is VFX technical stuff, as I am trying to work my way up into a TD job at the visual effects company I work at on my university holidays. I am currently a render wrangler/frontline support worker at Rising Sun Pictures, and as much as I love my job I would love to move up in to a position where I get to create things and solve problems. I am a computer science student at university, so I will undoubtedly post about the things I learn there but my primary goal is to teach myself the technical side of Houdini. Which means I will need to buff up on my python and hscript knowledge. As well as learn the inner and outer workings of Houdini. There is other software I will need/want to learn for the role but I have decided to start here, since it plays such a big role in the place I work. I

So basically I wanted to create a blog primarily as a place to keep all my thoughts about the things I am trying to learn. I am a very scatter-brained individual, one minute I am trying to teach myself the ins and outs of VFX pipelines, the next I am trying to teach myself web development. I am all over the place. But I have heard that having a place to talk through projects and the things I am trying to learn is a great way to not only document your progress, but a great tool for cataloging all the information you are trying to harvest and digest. So here we go. Lets see if I can keep this thing going. Turn it into a habbit to come here and write down the stuff I am consuming and trying to understand.