Environment in Houdini, a module fully designed and produced

Exercise 1 — Procedural asset modeling Required

Create at least one procedural asset of your choice:

• a procedural wall;
• a simple 5 m × 5 m ground with scattered stones;
• a climbing root with leaves (the root's growth is not required).

Technical challenge 1 Optional

Create a 5 m × 5 m ground with a brick wall in the center, leaves on the ground, and small stones scattered across the whole ground.

Technical challenge 2 Optional

On top of challenge 1: a root that starts from the ground and climbs up the wall. The stones are scattered only near the wall, without touching the root. The wall, the root, and the stones leave their imprint on the ground.

Exercise 2 — Choosing the environment Required

Exploration: look for three environments you would like to create, without worrying about complexity. The only criterion: you have to like them. Film environments are a good source of inspiration.

Selection and adaptation: together we pick one of the three, assess its feasibility within the time frame, and adapt it if needed by adding or removing elements.

Constraints and feasibility: we then review the constraints specific to the exercises and the technical feasibility of the chosen environment.

Exercise 1 — Choosing the environment Required

Together we choose an achievable environment that fits the course objectives. During the live sessions, I tailor the demos to the specific challenges of each environment.

Exercise 2 — Organic modeling Required

Model the nebula using volumes.

Depending on how powerful your computer is, don't use a high resolution for the volumes. A very low-resolution result is fine: you don't want to lose too much time on computation. I look at your setup first; the final image will come later.

Technical challenge Optional

• Import the nebula into Solaris
• Create 2 or 3 variations of the nebula with PDG
• Do the lookdev for the nebula
• Create the starfield
• Render an image of the nebula with the starfield in Solaris
• Keep smiling

Exercise 3 — Hard-surface modeling Required

Build the Rock Generator HDA, with or without the Python part.

The Python HDA videos (P1 to P6) are optional. They show how to save time by setting the HDA's parameters automatically. In “Python interface update” and “Python code update,” I provide object-oriented code to paste into the HDA if you get stuck, and I explain the algorithm piece by piece. Without Python, the HDA still works, but you have to set a lot of parameters by hand.

Technical challenge Optional

Build the Rock Generator HDA with the Python part.

Exercise 4 — Hero asset Required

Find references, then choose the hero asset to model.

Exercise 1 — Model the hero asset Required

• Model the hero asset with UVs and procedural textures
• Create 2 or 3 variations, with or without PDG
• Lock down the camera and place the hero asset on a simple grid

The deadline is tight: for UVs, go with automatic unwrapping and check your textures in Solaris, because the Houdini viewport often shows artifacts even when everything is correct in Solaris. If you run into a texture issue in Solaris, place the camera first: depending on the distance and angle, the flaws are often hidden. The goal is a still image rendered in Solaris.

For the variations, if you're short on time, simply change the base mesh's scatter seed by hand, without using PDG. In that case, remember to duplicate the Labs Maps Baker and rename it so you don't overwrite the original geometry (Houdini doesn't allow duplicate names within the same network). The same principle applies with a file cache in the Apprentice version.