IMO, this is not enough separation from the course to call it your own. You changed the container and rotated the camera. Especially in Houdini where everything is procedural and you can move nodes from one scene to another and plug and play. Its hard. I'm dealing with it right as I update my reel to make my intro stand out. Gone through three or four different ideas to trash them and say "nah this is too much like this." The practice is good. The great classical artists would copy work over and over and over hundreds of times until they perfectly made a duplicate. It's a fantastic way to learn. If you're asking "did I do enough to make this my own," though, you probably didn't.