3D Generalist: Procedural Modelling Collection

Introduction

Throughout my exploration of FX, I have gained a strong affinity for procedural modelling in production. My aim in this has been to find efficient strategies for generating flexible variations of model assets that are ready for FX applications like destruction, pyro, and fluids, all of which I am beginning to study. The following projects showcase my workflow organization, user interface strategies, and procedural modelling approaches in a growing collection of procedural models.

Suspension Bridge

Development of a Houdini Digital Asset (HDA) to generate a versatile suspension bridge based off of a user-defined curve. Tower foundations individually adapt to terrain contours when the optional terrain input is enabled.

HDA includes a myriad of exposed parameters for user control to define towers, deck, frame, cables, and foundation. All applicable parameters are exposed in an organized user interface.

Coral

Development of a Houdini Digital Asset (HDA) to populate a rock formation with coral.

This particular HDA focuses on providing versatile user control of the coral types throughout the rock. A noise option can be enabled to auto-populate the coral types throughout based on the noise parameters and a random seed. An alternative option in the controls provides the user the opportunity to manually paint each type of coral for managed art direction. This manual painting option was enabled through the programming of Python states in Houdini.

To further optimize the workflow, a wireframe mode can be enabled to expedite the auto-population and painting of coral without the potential lag of the instanced high-poly assets. Once the placement is defined, the high-poly assets can be re-enabled for rendering or other operations throughout the pipeline.

Individual coral types generated in Houdini through a previous project and used in this HDA as instanced assets.

Hangar Building

Exploration of Houdini to generate a versatile arch hangar building through procedural modelling that can be controlled to define various configurations. All applicable parameters are exposed in an organized user interface. The Houdini Digital Asset (HDA) includes optimized, nested HDAs for trusses & lights linked to Redshift instance spotlights. Drone model is from a previous Houdini project that I also modelled solely in Houdini; it is included in this hangar building project for referencing scale & context.

HDA user interface separated into General tab for typical edits and Advanced tab for refined customization. For clarity, the entire HDA network is strategically organized with a color-coded notation system. The notation system is generated through a Python script for quick deployment and standardization across projects. 

Light Fixtures

Emerging collection of light fixture Houdini Digital Assets (HDAs) being used to refine my skills in Houdini and procedural modelling. Each of the assets have exposed parameters to vary their configurations.

River Bed & Vegetation

Documentation of a project generated in Houdini using procedural modelling for a section of a river bed and vegetation, along with a FLIP fluid and whitewater simulation.

Procedural River Bed:

The river bed geometry section is coordinated with a control panel to define the river path and profile, terrain slope/s, seed values for the several vegetations (each of which are their own procedural networks with controls), as well as a profile control for the waterfall/cliff edge. It includes a coordinated UV layout ready for textures and a cohesive VDB collider geometry output.

FLIP Fluid & Whitewater Simulation:

The FLIP fluid simulation navigates through the river bed and responds to the rock collisions with a dynamic body of water and whitewater. Particle velocities, turbulence and other parameters are enhanced through an iterative process of parameter adjustments.

Transmission Towers

Development of a Houdini Digital Asset (HDA) to generate a procedural, linked series of transmission towers based off of a user-defined curve. Tower foundations individually adapt to terrain contours.

HDA includes a nested HDA for the individual transmission tower that has its own set of parameters for many variations and a Vellum solver to simulate the interlinked cable. All parameters are exposed in the parent HDA in a clear and concise user interface. Manual and auto cook options for the solver are embedded in the HDA with Python responding to parameter edits.

Website

www.hanspalacios.com