Knowledge Hub

How a remote VFX team delivered a high-profile studio-quality CG animation. Six fully CG-animated 15-second shots displayed across digital screens in NY and LA.

Álvaro Conejo Cañaveras 3D artist, Rookie Awards Finalist, Draft Selection, Portfolio of the Week, Grade A Quality Certificate, and Editor’s Choice Award.

Aleksandr Kirichenko’s journey from IT into the world of FX and Houdini is a story of persistence, discovery, and creative problem-solving. What began with web design and early experiments in drawing and music gradually evolved into a passion for storytelling through digital art, 3D modeling, and animation. Along the way, Aleksandr embraced Houdini for its scalability and freedom, tackled ambitious projects like his animated short Strive, and learned hard lessons about optimi

Interview with Marcelo Cermak, award-winning FX Technical Director and Visual Effects Artist. Fluid dynamics has become his specialty.

News: GridMarkets 3D Rendering & Simulation now supports Houdini 21 Submit Solaris/USD from LOPS easily in GridMarkets

Explore the story behind our featured artist Ricardo Leon, whose blend of Houdini FX, grooming, and Unreal Engine brings cinematic ideas to life.

In this Corridor Digital spotlight, journey behind the scenes with the creators redefining online action and VFX. Discover how their signature style, visual innovation, and fearless experimentation built one of the internet’s most iconic filmmaking brands.

Yuansi ‘Ivy’ Mai is a FX artist graduated from Gnomon School of Visual Effects in Los Angeles. Her artwork was recognized with Best of Term prize and collected to school reel of 2024. She is a talented and detail-oriented artist coming from a 2D illustration and media background.

Gianni Ritschard is a freelance 3D artist and 2D character designer based in Winterthur, Switzerland, with over nine years of professional experience in both studio and freelance environments.

This project was created using the new MPM solver introduced in Houdini 20.5. It was developed in SOPs, look dev built in LOPs, and rendered using Karma on GridMarkets.

Manuela Elena Cárdenas de la Miyar is a Junior FX  Artist based in Seville, Spain. She studied the Master of VFX and Compositing at Animum Creativity Advanced School in 2023, Málaga, Spain. She also has a degree in Fine Arts from the University of Granada, Spain.

This acrylic paint effect was created in Houdini version 20.5. The new Copernicus context was used to extract the main colors from an initial image, which were then applied in the Flip simulation. Finally, the effect was rendered in Karma. on GridMarkets. 

This case study explores the creation of a realistic snow environment using Houdini 20.5 and the Material Point Method (MPM) solver, enhanced by character animation and cloth simulation, and rendered through GridMarkets Renderfarm. The project tells the story of a medieval soldier’s returning home from the battlefield, walking across a snow-covered landscape under a hopeful morning sun.

Josh Meister created custom solvers for electric and magnetic fields to drive particle interactions by implementing real world physics.  Using GridMarkets, he was able to simulate and render several orders of magnitude more detail than he could otherwise. 

Loay Ahmed Maher Shaban is a talented 3D Creature Animator with a deep passion for creature animation. Renowned for his exceptional acting choices and dynamic, believable mechanics, he has proven to be a reliable and skilled member of his team, even when faced with complex and challenging shots.

Josh Meister is a recent graduate of IUPUI's Computer Graphics Technology program with a lifelong passion for visual effects. He has honed his skills in industry-standard tools like Houdini, Nuke, and Maya. In this interview, he shares insights into his Black Hole Rendering Engine project.

Brazilian VFX Technical Director and Pipeline TD Guilherme Casagrandi, founder of HardcoreFX and Annie Award nominee, is bringing high-level technical expertise to the global visual effects community through his growing YouTube channel. Known for his uncompromising approach to workflow efficiency and deep technical precision, Guilherme’s latest video releases explore some of the most advanced topics in modern FX production: from USD-based Houdini pipelines to automation in

Don’t miss SPHUG #7, the next São Paulo Houdini User Group meetup, proudly sponsored by GridMarkets! On July 19, 2025 at Faculdade Meliès, join us for a morning of creative deep dives, hands-on demos, and networking in person or via live stream. Sign up now and score 5 free rendering credits, plus an extra 10% on credit purchases with code SPHUG2025 through end of the year. Let’s take Houdini workflows to the next level!

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.​

In addition to our administrative portal for to manage users & budgets, all users can be set up under a single storage repository in...

You can download files manually via Envoy from the Files tab (firstly please make sure you are aware of how long we keep your files in...

SideFX Houdini's Solaris toolset is designed to revolutionize the way artists work with large data sets in visual effects and animation...

Non-fungible tokens, or NFTs, are a unique type of digital asset that are revolutionizing the way we think about ownership and value in the

The recommended way to install the Maya2GM plug-in is via Envoy's plug-in installer page . However, if you need to install the plug-in to...

Installing via Envoy The recommended way to install the GridMarkets add-on is via Envoy's plug-in installer page . If you do not see...

The recommended way to install the Maya2GM plug-in is via Envoy's plug-in installer page . However, if you need to install the plug-in to...

The recommended way to install the C4D2GM plug-in is via Envoy's plug-in installer page . However, if you need to install the plug-in to...

GridMarkets operates a "fair use" policy and generally allows up to 1TB of storage to be kept in Envoy for 15 days as long as there is...

As per our file retention policy the files were purged from the render nodes and were being re-synced from Envoy. Please note that the...

How to change Redshift log verbosity in Houdini Set "Redshift_setLogLevel" command in the Pre-Render Script section of the Redshift ROP...

If there are tilde characters in your file paths that means you have used a path that is just too long for Windows to handle or you have...

Windows Telnet is an application available as Windows feature which is not installed by default. In order to install this program please...

Our Houdini Cloud Cache node streamlines the simulation submission process, reduces errors &saves time, particularly for heavy simulations.

By using GridMarkets, Houdini studios can save time, money, and improve the efficiency of their workflow.

This article covers the key points for freelance artists to consider when evaluating cloud rendering and explains why Gridmarkets.com is...

This article explains the benefits of using Gridmarkets.com as a cloud render farm solution for universities, and addresses the key...

Discover how director Neil Scholes blends creativity and technology in VFX! In this webinar, Neil shares his journey from the BBC to high-end commercials, his approach to Houdini and cloud rendering, and how independent filmmakers can harness cutting-edge tools like GridMarkets to create stunning visuals faster than ever.