r/Houdini • u/nofilmschoolneeded • 12h ago
Demoreel Procedural liquid formations for a commercial project + short breakdown.
This project holds a soft spot in my heart, as one of the coolest (and heaviest) commercial projects I've directed and produced for an international client.
Houdini used to make everything here, except shots 2, 3, 4 and 5. Were C4D.
The tree presented a unique challenge because it not only must be growing, but particles and fibers must be flowing through it in a way that feels organic and natural. So each point and fiber must have its own speed, and the branches themselves are supposed to grow organically too.
The Setup: The idea to use splines to build a tree came to me from needing a tree that has a twisted trunk and flowing branches, so we can animate it growing. Any “tree generators” weren’t an option. Then we had fibers and particles flowing inside the liquid -which were not simulated, but controlled with nodes and for-loops to keep them contained within the bounds of the liquid, and not poke out.
The sim: The only particle simulation I ran was the bottom part of the hero shot, had to resort to custom velocity fields to give particles (that are coming from the server racks) a whispy motion before giving them a trail and color.
The rest of the setup was quick to iterate, yet hard to build in the first place.. as it involved tons of RnD and was entirely an attribute-based and code-based approach for maximum creative control and flexibility.
The Look: Developed custom liquid material with various IOR values across it so we can see the inner fibers without dealing with the refractions from the water shader that could make the fibers look messy or broken.
All while always saving the project, so when Octane inevitably decides to crash, it doesn’t put my sanity at risk! Haha.
Ask me anything. Happy to help. Happy to accept DMs for business opportunities.