AutoBake: Automated Groom Animation Pipeline for Feature Film | TAT Studio | Equinox 2025

When working on an Animation movie with a lot of furry characters and a limited number of CFX Artists you will quickly want to keep the artists' focus on Groom dynamics of hero characters and automate as many as possible characters in order to deliver the movie in the deadline. This is why the AutoBake system was built at TAT Studio, to automate an optimized and hight-quality Groom animation without dynamics, in order to keep artists focus on dynamics part. Together we will breakdown the technical bricks used to build the AutoBake system inside of Houdini using many of it's technical aspects and pipeline building tools. Obeida ZAKZAK works as a Houdini Pipeline Supervisor for Animation films at TAT Studio, covering a lot of technical aspects in Houdini, with big focus on Groom, CFX and FX workflows. Graduated from ENSEEIHT Engineering School in Toulouse with a Computer Science Engineering Degree. Joined TAT Studio as a Pipeline Development Intern and worked as a Houdini Technical Artist once graduated, then became a Pipeline Supervisor focusing on Houdini workflows in the studio. 00:00 Intro 01:52 Overview of The Jungle Bunch IP 05:44 Active production and shot work 09:32 Character-specific situations and setups 13:21 Curve stretching and deformation control 17:17 Bounding geometry and masking techniques 21:09 Optimizing fur positioning relative to camera 24:56 Using deformed guides in the hair procedural 28:55 Workflow discussion and transitions 32:47 Handling non-simulated assets of the same type #equinox2025 #Houdini #HairProcedural #VFX #TheJungleBunch #Simulation #Fur #Procedural #Animation #Pipeline #3DArt #FXWorkflow