Houdini Technical Artist Portfolio

Procedural Deserted City

This was a 10 week independent student project. The focus was on creating procedural tools for environment creation. The scene was implemented in virtual reality on the Oculus Rift. It is based on this piece of concept art www.artstation.com/artwork/k4R0d by Aaron Limonick.

Procedural Vine Tool

This is a procedural tool I created in Houdini to quickly and easily generate vines for film/game environments. The leaf atlas is from the Megascans library.

Vine tool bake to textures on low poly mesh

Vine tool volume paint mode

Vine tool surface mode

Vine tool volume mode

Vine tool in Houdini Engine (experimental)

Procedural Tree Generator

This is a procedural tool I created in Houdini to quickly and easily generate trees for film/game environments. The leaf atlas and bark texture are from the Megascans library.

Procedural Building Generator

This is a procedural tool I created in Houdini to quickly and easily generate brownstone style buildings for film/game environments. The shading was done in Unreal with textures from the Megascans library.

Landscape Flyover UE4

This is a real-time landscape flyover that I created for the intro of a short film. I imported a heightfield from Houdini to Unreal for the landscape using Houdini Engine. I built a tool in Houdini to create the trees, and Megascans were used for the grass and textures. To scatter the foliage I used the procedural foliage tools in Unreal.

Unreal Landscape Material

Houdini Heightfield

Houdini Heightfield Node Network

Holographic Map Animation

This is a holographic map animation created using Houdini and rendered with Mantra. I was responsible for the lower portion of the animation: the base grid, the initial pulse effect, and the ring platform for the sphere.

Procedural Book Tool

This is a procedural tool I created in Houdini to generate rows of books for film/game environments. Textures can be input for the covers/spines/pages and the tool will automatically create a texture atlas that will randomly distribute the textures among the books.

Houdini Preset Manager

Houdini preset manager coded from scratch using Python, PyQt and Qt Designer. Works as a custom python panel within Houdini.

Houdini PDG + Machine Learning - MNIST Image Recognition

Process breakdown: https://www.artstation.com/ryangold/blog/9B77/houdini-pdg-machine-learning-mnist-image-recognition

Houdini PDG - Gradient Descent

Process breakdown: https://www.artstation.com/ryangold/blog/Dnem/houdini-pdg-gradient-descent

Real-Time FX

Glowing Orb UE4

I was responsible for creating this glowing orb effect for the short film Polaris, using Unreal Engine.

Niagara Disintegration Effect UE4

This was an experiment in using Niagara, the new particle system for Unreal Engine. Model from the Megascans library.

Particle Disintegration Material

Mesh Disintegration Material

Niagara Emitter

Niagara Static Mesh Source Module

Niagara Static Mesh Source Module

Substance Designer Textures

These are some materials I created using Substance Designer and rendered in Marmoset Toolbag.