Why MOPs?
MOPs started as a collaboration between Henry Foster (Toadstorm) and Moritz Schwind (Entagma), who were both asked the question “Why is motion graphics so hard to do in Houdini?” Their vision was to leverage Houdini as a powerful and intuitive tool for design, allowing artists to work freely without worrying about the math. After about half a year of development in secret, the first version of MOPs was released in June 2018. It’s been in a rapid development phase ever since.
Henry Foster (Toadstorm)
Henry is the current developer of MOPs. He has been working as a Technical Artist in California and Oregon since 2006, bouncing around between commercial design and film studios both large and small as a lighter, rigger, effects artist, and pipeline/tools developer. He discovered Houdini around 2011 and has been unable to put it down since. He also has a long-running technical art blog, Toadstorm’s Nerdblog. Henry likes algorithmic growth, cats, and Islay whisky.
Moritz Schwind (Entagma)
Moritz was the original co-developer of MOPs, and is the less-beardy half of Entagma. Though he has since left the project, his contributions towards the Falloff system and the underlying design philosophy (not to mention the logo) were essential. He works as an Art Director and Technical Director in Munich, Germany. Moritz likes VEX, algorithms, and brewing “champagne”.
Special thanks goes to Adam Swaab, Jake Rice, Ian Farnsworth, Keven Weber, Matt Tillman, and Luca Scheller.