Featured Artist: Guilherme Casagrandi

Credit: HardcoreFX 2025 Nominee "Warhammer 40,000: And They Shall Know No Fear"

About

Guilherme Casagrandi

Founder | VFX TD | Pipeline TD at HardcoreFX | Annie Award Nominee

Guilherme Casagrandi is a seasoned VFX Technical Director and Pipeline TD, and the founder of HardcoreFX, a visual effects studio based in São Paulo, Brazil. Guilherme has contributed to several high-profile projects in the film and television industry.

His notable credits include serving as a Technical Director for the animated short film Warhammer 40,000. This work earned him and his team a nomination for Outstanding Achievement for Animated Effects in an Animated Television/Broadcast Production at the 52nd Annie Awards, recognizing achievements in animation for works released in 2024 .

Guilherme's filmography also includes roles as Lead Technical Director for Megalopolis (2024) and contributions to Ponto Zero (2016) .

Based in São Paulo, Guilherme continues to push the boundaries of visual storytelling through his work at HardcoreFX and his collaborations with studios worldwide.

New Nivus Project

What made using a render farm essential for the Nivus project?

"For the Nivus ad, we knew we would have a short window to deliver several shots. Therefore, we'd need a robust and reliable render farm to send all the shots in time.

GridMarkets was again our first choice, and we couldn't be happier with our choice, being able to keep up with the delivery schedule even with fast turnarounds throughout the project."

Do you have an estimate of how much time you saved by using GridMarkets?

"It's hard to tell in absolute numbers, but I would say at least 90% of the usual process was saved, since the effort was only to submit and check if the render was finished or not."

Viewport & Submitter UI

Breakdown

Artist Interview

How did you get started in the VFX industry? What led you to use Houdini?

During my final years in the mathematics undergraduate course, I became interested in motion graphics due to the influence of some friends in the business.

I came across Cinema 4D throughout my learning path, which sparked my interest in 3D animation. While I was trying to push my skills as far as I could, C4D seemed limited in using my math skills, and that was when I came across Houdini, which was still in version 10.

Houdini's workflow fitted my skills well since it was easy to use calculus and linear algebra to control parameters or animate geometry. Integrating art and math was a breaking point in my life and career—math could have meaning again (not just for theory) through the beauty of art and movement.

I was 25 and decided to pursue a career in motion graphics, but due to the industry's use of Houdini and my technical skills, I ended up migrating to the VFX business instead, and I have no regrets!

How did you learn Houdini in these early days?

At the time, there were just a handful of Houdini courses from which to choose. I remember buying the physical course (Houdini for TDs from Peter Claes) on CD from 3dBuzz. It was stiff and a bit lonely in my first years learning Houdini, but in the Math course, I realized that I could learn just from the books when I didn't have a good teacher to ask questions, and that skill was the main reason I managed to get through my first steps in Houdini.

FXPHD was very important because I learned not about Houdini-related stuff but about the VFX business overall. Several years later, I realized that knowledge is critical for making better decisions about approaching difficult shots.

Houdini had two places to look for answers: SideFX and ODForce forums. On ODForce, I came across another Brazilian using Houdini: Fabiano Berlin, now owner of the Invisible Works studio. Two weeks later, he was leaving the post-production company he was working for (Atomo VFX) and asked me if I wanted to fill his position as an FX artist.

What was the Houdini community like in Brazil when you were starting out?

As far as I know, at the time, there were just four people in Brazil working professionally with Houdini: besides me and Fabiano, there was Michel Zigaib and Cassio Homa, both fantastic people and outstanding artists, now working for big studios like Method and Milk.

Cassio showed me that "less is more" when approaching challenging shots and that more straightforward approaches lead to faster development, not the contrary. I not only use those lessons today, but I also teach them to my students and team.

My coworkers at Atomo were very helpful, giving feedback on my work, which helped sharpen my eyes for detail. The biggest challenge was figuring out why some things didn't work as expected since there was no other Houdini user to ask for help.

How were your first experiences in the Houdini world?

After some months at Atomo, I left to continue freelancing. After a couple of months, Gustavo Braga was hired as a CG Coordinator at Casablanca Studios and invited me to fill the seat of FX Lead. Gustavo is now a dear friend and someone I usually hire to help pull out challenging projects.

By the end of my fifth year working for Casablanca Studios, I felt the need for new challenges as the studio shifted focus. After visiting several studios in São Paulo, I realized Brazilian studios were still too narrow-minded about what a good technical director could bring. I then decided to become a freelancer. As a side project, I started teaching Houdini at Havok School, the first Houdini course in Brazil.

What motivated you to start your own VFX studio?

I was confident that project management was the weakest point of a VFX production, and that's why, on my first job (as a freelancer), I started a free trial of the former Shotgun Software (no Flow Production Tracking by Autodesk). I then learned that it wouldn't be impossible to do VFX work and project management, and hiring a good producer would be paramount.

A couple of projects down the road, I realized that was not enough, and the only way to produce the way I idealized was in my studio—that led to the creation of HardcoreFX.

What inspired the name 'HardcoreFX'?

I knew it would be no easy task since no studio focused on FX work in Brazil, especially with a clear focus on the tech side of the business.

I had no money at all, just the eagerness to do things right— and thus, everything should come from the heart and not for the pursuit of money, so the name should depict not only my vision of the studio but should be an expression of myself as well: so it was natural to come up with the name Hardcore since it's not only an expression of my teens hearing punk rock music, but it shows that we came to pull up the most challenging projects as well.

What strategies and technologies have shaped the growth of HardcoreFX?

I knew I had to start small, so I built a fully remote studio, avoiding the high costs of having an on-premises one and the chaotic traffic in São Paulo.

It was 2019, one year before the pandemic, and thus, we had a one-year leverage to develop best practices for working remotely.

In the early stages, I hired some old colleagues and some former students to help, but at some point, I understood that a fixed staff would make the best team, not occasional freelancers. That's half how we do things; the other half is technology-focused work.

Until now, our customers have been growing by word of mouth, but that's about to change: after several years of training staff and developing our pipeline, we have both things very polished— a novel approach to VFX work, brought from the same concepts that drive tech work, and edgy pipeline, that I built to get the most from the artists, easy to work with, the fewest number of clicks, all inside Houdini, using the latest techs, like PDG, Python3.11, ACES v2 and the USD framework, fully integrated into Flow Production Tracking. With a lot of automation, our pipeline is ready to work with the most complex projects.

But that's not the end of it. We're also finishing our rig pipeline, which we built with the same focus.

We're leveraging Houdini's brand-new APEX framework and character FX tools to bring cartoon and photorealistic characters to life.

Why GridMarkets?
How has GridMarkets impacted your studio's rendering workflow?

As a small studio finding its way among giants, GridMarkets is helping shape our future.

Until recently, the process of rendering submission to a render farm on the cloud was slow and cumbersome. Usually, someone on our team would have to check a lot of dependencies, submit a single frame to check, fix missing files, submit another frame to check, and continue on this loop until we had a correct frame. Then, we can submit the whole sequence.

GridMarkets' new LOP submitter was a game-changer for us. It fits very well in our pipeline since we are already building the scene using USD dependencies. Standard render farm submitters just don't work well with a full USD-based pipeline.

The new LOP tool checks deep dependencies under the USD structure and uploads everything to the cloud, making the submission process effortless and 100% reliable.

Can you share your experience using GridMarkets on recent projects?

Between January and February 2025, we used the tool to submit over 20 shots for two advertising projects. Every shot was submitted with a single click without frame-checking, resulting in zero bad frames and zero trash submissions.

That's a dream come true. We put much effort into developing a Houdini pipeline that allowed artists to work faster and more confidently. However, the render farm roundtrip was still a big issue—until now.

I can't stress enough how good the tool was in its first incarnation—we still have to test the new version, but we know it's even better.

We can now focus on the creative aspects of our projects without worrying about whether we can deliver the shots in time due to difficulties with renderfarm submission!
That will enable us to deliver bigger and bolder projects -
I can't thank the GridMarkets team enough!

How is GridMarkets supporting your studio's growth?

In late February, we almost won the first prize in VFX for TV at the 52nd Annie Awards while doing some effects for the Warhammer episode of Amazon’s Secret Level franchise for Blur Studio.

Our clients trust us to create high-end advertising effects for brands like Unilever, Volkswagen, Coca-Cola, and Ambev, among others. But we've been expanding into the entertainment business as well, creating effects for both seasons of the Brazilian Netflix series Invisible City, the cinematics of the latest Call of Duty game, and two episodes of the upcoming season of Netflix’s Love, Death and Robots, both working for Blur Studio as a vendor.

We are expanding our services to deliver full CGI projects with simulations, complex environments, character animations, and character effects. GridMarkets is helping us shape that future.

Our next step is to fully integrate GridMarkets’ submission tool into our tools, which will streamline our pipeline even more.

Then, we will extend our pipeline to do complex simulations on GridMarkets servers and remove the wait of long simulations from our machines.

So, we are excited about our future with the help of GridMarkets to bring the boldest projects to life.

Guarana Zero Project

"We used GridMarkets services for rendering purposes only. It was our primary choice due to the level of integration with Houdini, but we were surprised by the efficiency of the new cloud submitter."

Breakdown

Guarana LOPS 1

Guarana LOPS 3

Get Inspired

HardcoreFX Studio was nominated for
Best FX-TV/Media at the 52nd Annie Awards

The nomination credits include Guilherme Casagrandi and Raul Rodrigues, among others. This recognition highlights HardcoreFX's excellence in visual effects within the animation industry.

The nomination acknowledged their exceptional work on "And They Shall Know No Fear"—an episode from the Warhammer 40,000 series.

The episode, produced in collaboration with the renowned Blur Studio Inc., demanded a high level of technical expertise and artistic sensitivity.

Known for their strength in FX simulation and environment design, the team delivered visually complex sequences that captured the dark, gritty atmosphere of the Warhammer 40,000 universe.

From realistic destruction effects and atmospheric elements to seamless integration of CG assets, the studio’s contribution was critical to building the immersive tone that fans and critics praised. The project also demonstrated the potential of international collaboration, where Brazilian VFX talent stood shoulder-to-shoulder with some of the industry's most respected creators.