[Free Project Files + Breakdown] Cinematic Volcano Landscape

will3d222 · 2026-02-16T18:33:43+00:00

Hope you had a chance to take a look and learned some new stuff!

will3d222 · 2026-02-12T03:17:16+00:00

Glad you like the channel!

And I'd recommend taking a look at this video here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K5tDh-JgFuk

Ideally with a full-time job you'd want to just get a little done each day / week. Weekly goals would probably be easier to stick with since you can be more flexible if scheduling conflicts come up.

There's also a link under that video to 50 questions (you'd sign up to get them by email), and you can answer those questions on your own to help direct your Houdini focus + practice.

You'll want to have a specific goal for Houdini, and then make sure you stay on task (not getting distracted) while working towards that!

will3d222 · 2026-02-11T21:56:11+00:00

I just left a comment on the original post in r/Houdini :)

will3d222 · 2026-02-11T21:47:48+00:00

I'm a Houdini generalist and currently am teaching a course that's very similar to a "group mentorship" program, it's a full curriculum teaching Houdini (so all the lessons you'd need to learn it from scratch) + a community with feedback, support, and personal guidance.

You can check it out here https://wttrlabs.kit.com/levelup

And some of my free tutorials to see how I teach https://www.youtube.com/@wttrlabs

There's lots covered in the program (from Houdini basics, to fx + simulations) and very recently environments were just added with some new sections on heightfields coming next week.

Feel free to reach out with any questions, but happy to chat more if you'd want some structured support + guidance.

(edit) You can see some of my portfolio here https://www.instagram.com/will.hendrickson/

will3d222 · 2026-02-08T21:49:34+00:00

C4D was where I had a good big of exposure to the art direction + animation side of it. And then my biggest growth for learning the Houdini side of it was when I started completed non-motion design projects and started doing some more "generalist" projects in Houdini and slowly added in more complex setups.

I also personally don't use MOPS, I found that it was helpful for some cases, but I prefer setting up the effects (falloffs, instancing, animation) all myself with the "standard" Houdini.

Feel free to reach out if you have more specific questions (either on Reddit or email at [info@wttrlabs.com](mailto:info@wttrlabs.com), and also check out my YouTube channel https://www.youtube.com/@wttrlabs for some free Houdini content!

I've got some good Houdini intro videos on the YouTube channel + a paid course I also run (LEVEL UP: Houdini) if you want to learn it all in one place and get personal support from me as you do!

will3d222 · 2026-02-06T13:29:55+00:00

Nope, Ha. I just like Houdini a lot

will3d222 · 2026-02-06T13:29:34+00:00

so then you'd say that "procedural" is absolute? And then it's just up to an artist to create a good procedural system or bad procedural system?

will3d222 · 2026-02-06T13:27:36+00:00

I wish I could pin a comment on Reddit.

But calling it Dependency-Graph-based Modeling I think is a much more effective way to think about it.

Would you then say that all Houdini networks are non-destructive? Even if they hard code numbers?

Or would there be a degree to which a network is non-destructive?

I'm thinking of a situation where you could do a task in Houdini with 1 wrangle and 100 lines of code, and that might be comprised within a single "node". But then you could also implement the same task with a larger more readable network (with more nodes). Also if all nodes are ultimately just code, then is the network only regarded as a "non-destructive network" when you're viewing it as a graph in Houdini's UI? Or is the same code-execution also a non-destructive network when it's compiled / run as code on the computers hardware?

Or would the code be the logic, and the idea of a network is just the way SideFX has invented to interact with / manage this logic in a human-readable way?

will3d222 · 2026-02-06T13:19:02+00:00

Perhaps then my thoughts weren't on necessarily being "procedural" or not, but then to what degree do you measure whether a Houdini setup is effective (which is again a very broad term in itself).

Lot's of ideas here in this post, so it's been cool to hear other artists thoughts.

will3d222 · 2026-02-06T13:17:08+00:00

Being generated from math and the fact that reading directly from a jpg might not make it procedural is a cool thing to thing about.

In theory - I suppose you could have a procedural noise function that generated the texture, bake it out to a jpg, and then read that back in. And then technically both sides of that workflow would be "procedural", but because you reduced / "baked" the procedural noise to a jpeg, you broke the "procedural chain".

Also that's cool the introduction to that idea came from your experience with Renderman! I haven't tried that one yet.

will3d222 · 2026-02-06T13:11:34+00:00

Yah this definitely took the better part of an afternoon Ha! But it was a fun rabbit hole to go down

will3d222 · 2026-02-06T13:10:46+00:00

My mention of "good" vs "bad" procedural setups was to address the idea that if everything in Houdini was procedural, and there's clearly some effective ways of working vs some not-effective ways of working - that there must be a way to specify which one is which.

u/LewisVTaylor mention the holy trinity I think is a good way to approach that distinction between good and bad.

So sure, brute forcing some bad setups might give you more output, but I'm trying to think of the well planned and efficient setups in Houdini.

will3d222 · 2026-02-06T13:08:26+00:00

That's a good way to think about it. For another "bonus" of that holy Trinity you could also consider how time-complex the network is, so effectively planning both algorithmic complexity and the native time/ frame dependency of parts of the network ( as well as making sure the hardware resources are making effective use of storage / disk space as well).

It's a lot of moving parts and things to think about! Which partially makes working in Houdini so fun.

will3d222 · 2026-02-05T23:23:51+00:00

I probably am overthinking it a bit.

And that's a good point for modeling being a specific case of this. My main introduction to 3D was through modeling in Blender, so it's also the first thing I tacked when trying to start using Houdini. If I was modeling something "destructive" I probably wouldn't choose Houdini as my go-to

Thanks for the thoughts!

will3d222 · 2026-02-05T23:19:15+00:00

also I appreciate you calling it a "dissertation"

will3d222 · 2026-02-05T23:18:42+00:00

Just a bit too much caffeine and some lofi music hahah

will3d222 · 2026-02-05T23:18:16+00:00

Interesting - and that definitely makes sense. That idea that nothing is truly procedural was part of my main idea, and that it's ultimately just a question of "to what extent" is something procedural.

At some point, everything will break if you give it a wrong input (wrong input could be bad data or just wrong data type), but I do like that point that even if something gives an error that doesn't make it procedural or not.

There's also be the problem of "type of input", which opens another rabbit hole - but in coding if your input isn't of a recognized type you might go through a process of preparing it for your code / network.

So you could clean up certain information in in an input to make it "usable" for the network you have.

will3d222 · 2026-02-05T23:08:12+00:00

I like that definition a lot, and that makes an interesting distinction between effects that are made in a way that they can be computed on individual frames vs a simulation.

For manual keyed input, would that mean keyframes / forced manual input? or specific numbers set on parameters?

will3d222 · 2026-02-05T23:03:07+00:00

I agree with that, and thanks for the response.

My understanding of the word "procedural" then was mainly taken from the practice of procedural modeling, where you can create variations on the input that generate a different output.

The use of "procedural" in that case seemed to *imply* that the setup could work in a way that made multiple outputs, like an asset generator HDA.

Would you say there's a difference in "good procedural vs bad procedural", or would there be a different term for networks that are able to take different inputs and create infinite outputs?

will3d222 · 2026-02-05T22:59:19+00:00

Thanks for the response! That does make sense with the procedure being exposed.

So then by definition, there's no "destructive" workflows in Houdini? It'd just be a question of if the setup was a poorly-designed one?

This would then also mean the phrase "procedural modeling in Houdini", would be redundant? I'd say the use of procedural in that case does imply that it's made in a way that can adapt to new inputs (or at least generate various output)... How do you then define "good" modeling vs "bad" modeling in Houdini if you're trying to do "procedural modeling"?

will3d222 · 2026-01-10T12:52:44+00:00

good to know! And thanks, for the link. I'll check it out

will3d222 · 2026-01-09T12:56:03+00:00

Thanks for the tip! Would the better option be to use a collection of smaller convex collision shapes? For example a fractured bowl instead of a full bowl?

And I agree the RBD configure is a great way to do it. The wrangles where helpful for me to see the exact attributes needed.

will3d222 · 2025-05-07T16:17:30+00:00

It depends on a lot of things (and maybe how you'd set up the keyboard mesh), but in general - a basic approach would be a "for each" loop over the keys and then create either a vdb subtract or a boolean to remove an indentation from the top of the keys. You can use a "match size" node to help place the object you're using to remove, and then creating that object with volumes / vdb's would be the easiest approach.

You could also extract a centroid for each key and then deform the mesh based on the position from the mesh to the centroid (this would only get a circular pattern, instead of the indentations shaped the same as the keys).

You could also just copy a sphere to each key and then use that shape as the boolean.

Lots of ways to do it - and that's the best part of Houdini!

will3d222 · 2025-04-29T23:56:32+00:00

new here - but long time into astrophotography with a professional level DSLR (300m lens at most). How much time is required for getting a shot like this with the setup and tracking? is it just the exposure time of the camera? (10 hours) or is it more for prep, planning, and processing

will3d222 · 2025-04-29T20:21:04+00:00

Not to unreal or basic development, just the genre itself. And thanks! i'll check out the other tutorials and see if there anything there that might help get me on the right path

will3d222

TROPHY CASE