What is Houdini used for?

Houdini is a 3D software developed by the Canadian SideFX. Eventhough Houdini has been around for a long time, which is almost 25 years now, it did not get its fair share of professional production projects, such as VFX and video games, compared to other packages, until the last decade, when artists and studios realized how big of a beast it truly is, and started using it on the biggest projects to complete the most difficult tasks and to achieve the best and most realistic results.

SideFX adapted Houdini from the PRISMS suite of procedural generation software tools. Its exclusive attention to procedural generation distinguished it from other 3D computer graphics software.

Today, we are going to take a look at What is Houdini used for in different industries to help artists and studios work on their projects.

1- FILM & TELEVISION

SideFX Houdini is a 3d package that can be relied on when it comes to visual effects production pipelines, and it offers a fantastic set of features for creating visual effects or what is known as VFX. It can be used for creating visual effects and integrating them into live-action shots, achieving incredibly high-quality results. Due to this, it is being used more and more in live-action movies, especially, blockbusters.

One of the reasons why Houdini is attractive to VFX artists and studios is its ability to achieve high levels of flexibility and control to enhance both creativity and productivity. In addition to that, Houdini has primarily a procedural workflow that can help artists more easily respond to the director or client feedback with the ability to make changes at any time, even deep into production.

Creating feature film-quality Destruction effects at the top of What is Houdini used for, with its advance particle and dynamics tools. Actually, some of the best Studios rely on it to work on blockbuster VFX using particles, fractured rigid body dynamics, and to Create massive simulations using tools such as packed primitives to optimize memory and take projects to the next level.

Houdini is also used by a lot of VFX studios, small and large, to do a lot of work that is usually outsourced from bigger projects like movies or tv series, especially, in the last decade, during which way more work for VFX artists became available because of the growth in the quantity and the quality of CGI in entertainment projects.

Disney is a notable user, having employed Houdini in its marvel movies, also animated movies such as Frozen and Zootopia. In addition to some popular TV shows, such as Game of Thrones that utilized Houdini for some visual effects too.

Examples of What is Houdini used for in visual effects in feature film:

Rise FX visual effects studio worked on city shots in Captain Marvel and it relied on its previous experience in crafting a number of cities with complex buildings and distinctive patterns to generate a megacity using a Houdini’s workflow utilizing several procedural techniques in doing so.

With so many building pieces and the need for fine detail, RISE FX set to work in building a city as efficiently as possible. The build process started with layout and animation in Maya, before moving into Houdini for asset shading, lighting and final rendering, which was done in Mantra. 

For the upper part of the city, RISE FX crafted gross shapes based on the concept art. And Background buildings were achieved with scattering tools.

They started with simple shapes first, for the top level, and then, they used procedural tools to generate the second level of detail required. They used these tools to do variations of building tops because that’s what you see the most, which are just silhouettes, so there they just scattered stuff on the top buildings.

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Also, DNEG is a British motion picture visual effects and computer animation studio that was given a task of working on one particular sequence in Men in Black: International, where the twins face off against the film’s two heroes, Agent H  and Agent M. DNEG solved the energy effects for the twins using Houdini, which came about via a combination of particle and fluid simulations. 

They started by investigating astrophotography – of galaxies and nebulas. The most important visual difference between cosmic dust and earthly dust is the presence of millions of stars. They tested both particle and smoke simulations, and found they could get the detail they needed with particle renders, and the motion they needed from fluid simulations. And they ended up with a sort of nebulous volumetric thing, with tiny stars scattered throughout.

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Another example is Imageworks’ effects simulations for the Supper Uber Elemental and the surrounding Tower Bridge scenes were rendered by the studio’s lighting team using Katana and Arnold. A lot of attention was paid to the lighting interaction from the various effects. In particular, the light cast from the fires and lightning had to interact with all the other elements on the characters and environment.

They used pretty much every trick in the book to accomplish Mysterio’s effects. They used particles mixed with volumetrics and at times generated surfaces along to advect these particles and volumes. Then, lots of composition work was done to help add that extra level of detail. Using Sony’s proprietary pipeline tools based around Houdini HDAs, Imageworks was able to quickly propagate the effects from shot to shot.

2- Game development

A very good 3d package for video game developers, is another thing of several things of What is Houdini used for, especially, with the procedural approach that it offers, which can be a smarter way to create quality games and to achieve great gameplay, while meeting deadlines and keeping costs under the budget.

Speaking of budget, Houdini offers an indie version for those indie and small game developers who can’t afford the full price, which is a nice thing, because honestly, not all developers can afford the cost of this software used for creating video games.

Planet Alpha Indie Game

As an example, an indie Game development studio used Houdini in the development of their indie game called Planet Alpha.

PLANET ALPHA is an adventure that takes place in a living alien world where you have the ability to control the day and night cycle.
It combines fast platforming, puzzles and stealth elements with a unique art-style to create a unique experience for players.

Houdini was used by a team of 3 artists to create a large variety of assets for different environments, such as jungles, deserts, mountains, and floating islands.

They also used Houdini to model characters, generate mountains, clouds, rigid body collisions, and more.

Overall, they used Houdini’s procedural workflow to save time, because they needed a lot of iterations and automation to make this project possible.

Visual effects is also something of What is Houdini used for, and it is not limited to film and tv shows only because it is possible to bring high-quality FX into video games with Houdini’s particle and dynamics tools.

Also, in What is Houdini used for, we have prototyping, in-game experience using particles, fractured rigid body dynamics, fluids, and more.

Using Houdini’s procedural workflow, it is possible to create large scale environments and rapidly iterate throughout a project’s lifecycle to bring the environments to life.

Also, one of the best time-saving options that Houdini offers is Procedural terrain generation, using heightfields to quickly layer shapes, add noise, and run erosion simulations.
Eventhough there are other tools that can do this job combined with the power of a game engine, such as Unreal engine, if you have Houdini at your disposal, you can quickly achieve realistic terrains for use in a game engine as well.

Ubisoft

As an example, Ubisoft used Houdini to help build the beautifully realistic world set in Montana.

Their procedural tech art team developed tools in Houdini for freshwater, power lines, sand, cliffs, biomes, fog density map, and a world map. Using Houdini Engine, these tools were fully integrated into the Ubisoft game editor so that game artists could craft the world using Houdini tools from the game editor environment they’re comfortable with.

The procedural workflows were used to alleviate tedious and time-consuming tasks, to allow the game artists to focus on creating beautiful, immersive worlds, and fun gameplay.

Also, one of the most important aspects of creating video games is cinematics, which is also What is Houdini used for, according tohis rich history in feature film effects, it is the perfect tool for impactful cinematics and game trailers. Along with Houdini’s deep VFX feature set, powerful lighting tools and the Mantra renderer provide a high-quality and efficient look development pipeline.

3- Motion Graphics & Advertising

Advertising is also What is Houdini used for, and there is a big market for studios and artists using Houdini that focus on this type of work. And in the same way, that Houdini can handle the different entertainment projects, it is used to produce professional TV commercials for some of the biggest brands and companies in the world.

Designers, animators, and storytellers use motion graphics to create static, interactive, or motion-based content that stimulates audiences using powerful and compelling visual narratives using Houdini and its procedural node-based toolset.

Once again Houdini’s node-based workflow let’s motion graphics artists generate points, lines, surfaces, and volumes then interconnect them in creative ways. They can fully explore an idea then easily make changes to generate multiple iterations.

One of the studios that use Houdini for ads production is Megalis, which is a Tokyo-based studio specializing in high-end VFX. They created beautiful abstract advertising for Chinese phone manufacturer Xiaomi, taking the viewer on a journey from tiny to massive, all in one camera shot. They did this using Houdini’s procedural workflows that allowed for quick iterations to power Megalis’s creative process.

Also, Unexpected is a post-production studio in Germany that is a relatively new user of Houdini for ad production. They put it to good use to create a gorgeous environment for this Huawei commercial featuring Gal Gadot.

The video that the studio created was much more than a commercial for a product because the studio focused on the environment and the car and other things, which makes the viewers forget that they are watching a commercial.

The team shot environment scenes in Iceland for two weeks, but later, they decided, it was not good enough, so, they replaced it with a complete CGI environment that was created in Houdini but the result turned out to be fantastic in the end.

4- Virtual & Augmented Reality

Virtual and augmented reality are interesting fields that a lot of companies and studios are starting to rely on more and more to create new and better ways to work or entertain our selves to make our lives easier.

Virtual and augmented reality projects are evolving at a rapid pace. Generally speaking, the purpose of using this technology is to create deeply immersive environments, where audiences can experience the digital world with a new level of vividness. and of course, it is also, what is Houdini used for.

Houdini, procedural techniques can be employed to create more content faster, and to support the iterative process that goes into designing these virtual worlds. This 3d package can be used to easily build densely populated scenes also to optimize the content for efficient playback.

In the end, I hope this video was helpul, and gave you a clear idea on What is Houdini used for.

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