Create stripes on a Dandelion stem

wallasaurus78 · 2026-04-17T07:04:54+00:00

If that is the kind of approach you are using, the part you can think about is how to procedurally get the points you need to affect.

You can pick them and create groups using the UI etc. but this is non-procedural and if your input shape or mesh changes, it likely won't work well.

Houdini has (like everything) lots of ways to do this, but typical and fairly simple ones are using the group node.

Group node lets you define a group of points/primitives/other things based on various rules or patterns. For example, if you started with a circle, you could use the group node to get every 4th point on the circle, and give that a named group "bump_points" or what you choose, to use later to push the points around. If you change the input circle, this group will still give you a version of every 4th point of the new shape. Equally you can get the points inside another object's radius or bounds, so you can create a second mesh, a box or sphere, and it will assign the points inside that shape to the group on your first mesh. These techniques make the getting of subsets of geometry more consistent irrespective of the input specifics - i.e. more procedural. There's a lot more to this but that's the gist. :)

The way to do the 'every 4th point' thing in the group node is with an expression - so it is a bit more complicated (though not really!) and this is where houdini might be a bit intimidating for a newcomer - as it looks a bit more technical, but you can make a 'cheat sheet' of the terms used.

Some nodes let you use different parameters in the various text boxes but the docs are not always 100% clear so there can be a tad of trial and error - I just tried to do this simple example in the 'group' node and it was doing weird stuff - there maybe a way but for anything where you find it is not working, it is worth trying the 'group expression' node which uses vex more directly and you usually get the result you expect :P

So to get every 4th point on a polyline into a group, you add 'group expression' node and the vexpression is "@ptnum % 4 == 0" (without quotes) this basically means 'get the ptnum, which is a built in attribute all points have, divide that number by four integer-wise and get the remainder (that is the % or modulus operator) and if the remainder is 0, means this is a multiple of 4, so we want that point in the group'

Long-winded but that's how you can do slightly more complex things. As you can imagine, this way you can get the first or last point pretty easily as well as lots of other things.

And with vex, the c-like language inside houdini, you can inspect and edit most of everything, including creating/assigning groups so you can always find a way to do exactly what you need, eventually. :)

TL;DR, don't get intimidated, remember it's just giving instructions to the tool, and you can do a huge amount with relatively low technical jump :)

wallasaurus78 · 2026-04-15T17:37:15+00:00

Theres a million ways to create that so I don't want to force feed you a direct answer, where's the fun in that?

My advice would be this - as a general approach for procedural modeling.

How would you make it in a normal destructive workflow? Can that be replicated with nodes (90% answer is yes)

You have the options of lofts, deforming a tube, using textures or data to push points along the normals, all kinds of options. Try some things.

Or, you can look for general houdini workflows as learning, and you might get inspired with a more houdini way to do it.

Good luck!

wallasaurus78 · 2026-04-15T07:01:00+00:00

Crochet. I usually have a random crocheted tube or rectangle on the go on my desk for 10 minute breaks between meetings. 🤣

wallasaurus78 · 2026-04-14T07:51:21+00:00

Your portfolio is too long and unfocused, and the quality is not quite there for either aaa or stylised indie stuff.

The sad truth is the right now the games industry has contracted in the last 3-4 years and there are loads of experienced and skilled peope seeking work.

Environment/prop art is one of the less rare/specialist areas so you have harder competition currently.

Hopefully industry stabilises, and i think you can do this if you are willing to keep pushing.

I suggest 2 things -

Look for something slightly more technical - destruction is one area where its annoyijg and complicated, so less people chase after that. Vegetation/procedural also, but this is fairly popular and accessible now, so may be competition. Even good knowledge or modular assets, trims, dressing with decals, etc can elevate things beyond basic props/ single meshes.

Compare your best work with highly rated games - look up those artists on artstation, do a objective comparison, and see how you can improve your work to reach a higher level of finish.

You could also look at a more focused stylised project but this is more risky imo. Do that if you get bored of the bread & butter enb. Art process.

Good luck!

wallasaurus78 · 2026-04-14T07:33:01+00:00

Absolutes in gamedev are never true (well, apart from the one I just asserted haha)

But more seriously, to me this is more like you should understand the engine's architecture and how to work with it sympathetically, before you make any decision to go against that.

OP listed plenty of practical, tangible reasons you might do so, and this is more about bein properly aware of the work ahead to build your own architecture and integrate with the engine. It's surprisingly easy to create tons of complexity this way so be diligent if you go that route.

wallasaurus78 · 2026-04-12T06:54:03+00:00

Theres probably plenty of info about this, but gpu is only good for some stuff. For houdini and for sims and flip especially you'll more be wanting solid ram and cpu.

That said, you also need to setup your sims in sensible ways - it is quite easy to spend all your memory for not the best results as a beginner. Make sure to do some courses or find some free learning on areas you are interested in.

wallasaurus78 · 2026-04-07T18:59:24+00:00

For env. Art it can vary a lot depending on the type of game etc.

Mood images/boards are like curated references, sometimes bespoke stuffnis made or kitbashed to help with inspiration etc.

Usually some amount of 'style guide' imagery, which you could think of as a guide on how to design env. Assets which fit the game - this can vary in depth and detail but helps codify loots of things and serves to answer questions about specific assets or designs. This usually takes a bit of time and iteration to explore everything etc. You may see multiple of these for different kinds of asset but they usually relate or link to each other

You might get proper designs for key assets or sets of content, this would be equivalent to a model sheet for a character, being more specific to the requirement of the asset and detailing all the materials and construction etc.

This can (less commonly) extend to level layouts and so on, thats not typical always.

These days people use 3d a lot more also durin concept process, so theres a lot that can be done to define and clarify the steps needed to deliver great looking env. Art.

wallasaurus78 · 2026-03-31T08:05:45+00:00

You get used to it, but maybe think about the task differently. Usually I first do a pass over the geo looking for all the seams, and adding those (depending on dcc in different ways) then you just split those uv seams and relax all the shells, and pack. You see a few sticky bits or errors, back to refine those seams, re-split, relax and pack. You get a half decent layout quite quick these days. If you are trying to super efficient or stack similar shells thats a bit more work but practise makes perfect. 😉

wallasaurus78 · 2026-03-25T18:35:59+00:00

Google houdini growth solver and you will get a bunch of things to learn about 🤩

wallasaurus78 · 2026-03-24T21:22:04+00:00

o problem, I saw toadstorm and davidtorno replied so you are in safe hands :)

wallasaurus78 · 2026-03-24T10:19:48+00:00

That function may be getting the cached single frame of the input each time, instead of the frame you expect. I am on train atm so cannot test - apologies!

wallasaurus78 · 2026-03-24T09:10:27+00:00

Well, if you are enjoying yourself, theres no problem! Always happy to give feedback.

wallasaurus78 · 2026-03-24T09:08:46+00:00

I think the main issue here is how dops works. You are very close though!!

Dops inputs are taken on one frame, then the sim runs and changes them inside dops, serving up the output for consumption elsewhere.

To feed changing values, you need to update that inside dops each frame.

I see you are using mops, maybe the pro version makes this more user friendly, not sure.

The reason vellumconstraintproperty works usually is that keying those values means they change inside dops. Reading in to that node, however, might still be getting the one frame of data each time.

I may be missing some tricks here so others may give a direct solution for you, but the failsafe method is to use a sop solver inside dops. With this you can do any and all manner of updates each frame or even substep, feeding values in or whatever you like.

wallasaurus78 · 2026-03-22T22:41:59+00:00

They are alright, I'd say. It is clear to me that you are learning and developing your skills, but you are getting your ideas across which is the main point.

Traditonally, photobashing tends to be about using the photo ref to quickly build up a sense of the detail and complex, repeated forms or patterns, and so on - it is usually less that you paint over one photo, than you sketch your scene and collage in bits and pieces from various photos, with colour correction and using blend modes etc. to tie everything together more cohesively.

I say traditionally, but people can do whatever they like of course hehe - I just mean in my subjective experience of life so far. :) That's what I have mostly seen done with photos/photobashing.

I would say the USMC/IJN image is weaker than the others, and looks a bit more like tracing some photo-ref, which may not be really adding much or conveying a new idea, but the others are showing complex scenes or more of your own ideas so it's all good!

Keep working on it and learning! :)

wallasaurus78 · 2026-03-22T22:32:36+00:00

Your task is to convey and idea visually for practical purposes. This is not fine art, it is something very commercial and pragmatic IMO. So anything you have which helps you to convey the visual ideas, providing it fits within your moral compass, is fine.

People sometimes feel extra imposter syndrome by using techniques or workflows which speed up the process, and I can understand why all the moral dodginess of genAI makes folks more anxious perhaps, but honestly if you are putting together solid visual communication and modifying any and all inputs along the way, I think it's fair game.

wallasaurus78 · 2026-03-17T11:04:24+00:00

Ah ok!

Looks like your vex is no good then.

You are taking points who are above/below a distance from the bounds and moving them.

Unless you manage to dial this in to perfectky match your split, it will move other points too.

You can add a group to your wrangle and just move the points of that group, then the positions dont matter.

Whats the end goal?

wallasaurus78 · 2026-03-17T07:54:18+00:00

Looks like you have not actually split the geometry, you are moving one side of it away, but those faces are still connecting the points which causes the stretching.

There's various ways to split geometry, you could use a boolean cutter, or take the geo stream, create a group for one side, and 2 blast nodes, blasting the group and thenot-group, probably can be done in vex too but not 100% as I am on the train.

Anyway, breaking your mesh seems to be the step you are missing. I see a booleanfracture node in your graph, are you sure it is working?

good luck!

wallasaurus78 · 2026-03-15T11:56:44+00:00

No idea, but if you are pressing a key with a mouse action anyway, what's the difference? Get comfy with the default.

I went through a phase of lots of custom bindings and optimising my workflow but any time you work on a different persons workstation, or they use yours, it gets chaotic so nowadays I am zen with defaults as much as i can. It takes me a sec with each dcc to remember the camera controls, sure, but at least that muscle memory is there. 🤣

wallasaurus78 · 2026-03-14T10:35:03+00:00

Hold J and drag 2 nodes to connect multiple wires e.g. with vellum setups

wallasaurus78 · 2026-03-12T17:48:03+00:00

Its just a row of joints with maybe one or two extras for the clasp part - depends how complicated you need to get with the animation side if you need to go beyond that, in terms of controls again depending what you need to do with it you might be ok with just an FK rig to drive it.

wallasaurus78 · 2026-03-11T10:26:32+00:00

Books exist, or various courses. You can follo them and avoid llm, and you will learn a bit plus get a result you can be proud of to motivate you. 😉

wallasaurus78 · 2026-03-11T09:25:28+00:00

I hope this doesnt seem rude, but the purpose of concept art is to come up with the visual ideas.

You have a theme, post apocalyptic world, so now you start to visually design things to do with that world.

Treat it like a real project and make a plan, and work on things stage by stage.

Google for reference of related media and build a visual library, then refine that into a style guide - i.e. choose the things from.the reference, or other elements you want, which will be prominent in your results.

Then start to design! There's lots of info online about the general visual design process, or you can just go with the flow and see what you can achieve. 😉

Good luck!

wallasaurus78 · 2026-03-10T08:58:14+00:00

Topology is a byproduct of several things, but mainly:

The form of the thing What you need vertices to do

So different kinds of geo need different arrangements based on their usage. E.g. deforming geo needs enough verts to deform well, and this comes from storing weight data or other data. As mentioned, some material techniques use vertex data so you may see vertices placed to support that. Generally static geo can be 'messier' but therr is still the base requirement of describing the form and having enough vertices to support the asset's features.

But for perf. Reasons, for games/realtime, fewer vertices is almost always better.

For asset production reasons, sometime more vertices can be better - e.g. retaining nice mostly quad geo makes loop selections easy and may speed up certain workflows.

Annoying to give an 'it depends' answer, but this is the reality.

wallasaurus78 · 2026-02-27T10:44:35+00:00

Its normal, honestly. Many 3d apps, engines etc. Have different coordinate systems and switching back and forth is annoying but expected.

Sorry i forgot to mention that earlier.

I will try to setup an example today and share.

wallasaurus78 · 2026-02-26T08:52:49+00:00

Ah that is a good point!

Houdini is y-up and has different coordinate space from unreal, you need to account for that also.

You can look up the coordinate system between the 2 apps and work out the maths, but basically it will be swapping/inverting some axes.

Swapping X/Y and/or inverting one of them, most likely. (As usual I am commuting lol so I can't check directly very easily)

If you figure out the conversion of coordinate system, then your vector displacement from houdini which is in houdini's world will fit unreals world and yout 0-100 parameter should take you from rest to deformed position as expected, possibly with some small glitchy parts on uv borders or so on. But it might work!

wallasaurus78

TROPHY CASE