Best project of year 2023-2024

                      Alps landscape

My first project is an establishing shot inspired by the French Alps. On a sunny afternoon, a shelter nestled in the mountains provides a peaceful respite for hikers. I wanted to learn how to make large shots like this and control the level of detail at different distances from the camera.

Using Gaea was essential for me due to the extensive terrain in the shot. It was a pleasure to work with this software and generate terrain with high-quality detail rapidly. I then imported it into Houdini to refine the terrain and create masks using various VOP techniques, allowing for procedural shading directly within Houdini.

I created multiple masks using VOPs to achieve the organic texturing that mountains often exhibit. This method enabled me to procedurally texture the terrain and iterate for the different terrains within the landscape.

As Gaea was essential, SpeedTree assisted me for pine trees. I imported them into Houdini to create LODs  by reducing the number of leaves. To maintain tree density, the remaining leaves were scaled up to simulate density from a distance.

Once the look development and ingest were complete, I reused the masks created earlier for texturing in VOPs  to efficiently distribute flora across the terrain.

Creating the sky clouds directly in Houdini posed a challenge due to the large size of the scene. However, using various volume VOPs, I was satisfied with the distribution of clouds in the sky. Integrating them for compositing purposes became easier as a result.

                        Anubis Cave

In the desert of Egypt, in a cave, Anubis presents a heart for judgment to Ammit. It is Ammit who determines whether the heart will ascend to heaven or descend to hell.
Recreating a cave only using displacement methods and procedural workflows presented a  challenge, especially when the shot where close to the elements.

I began by creating a simple grid and then added multiple displacement nodes, following a workflow of big, medium, and small shapes to gain control over the overall shape of the cave. Once the walls were formed, I ised heightfield and displacement techniques to recreate the terrain, merging multiple detailed terrain parts I had previously created to achieve as organic a ground as possible.

Optimizing the geometry was crucial, particularly for the cave walls, and using remeshing by attribute facilitated this process.

I used various VOP masks to recreate a shading for the cave. By combining and blending different Megascans shaders, I recreated a shading of what is observed in Egyptian caves.

To get the details found in Egyptian caves and tombs, I created displacement maps using real pictures such as hieroglyphs or tomb walls. This allowed me to  reproduce the detailed tomb art on the walls and columns.

         Chirbiquet National Park

Lost in the Amazonian jungle, these giant boulders rise up to the canopy, shrouded in mystery and covered by lush flora, creating a beautiful and captivating landscape from the Chiribiquete National Park.

The challenge was to create these cliffs using Houdini without resorting to ZBrush. By utilizing various VOPs and VEX expressions, I was in charge of recreating an organic shape for the cliffs. Maintaining consistent volume proved difficult, as using displacement tended to enlarge the mesh. I frequently converted the cliffs into volume VOPs to carve into them.

It was challenging to capture every detail on the cliff for texturing, but by using curvature and creating various masks procedurally, I achieved an organic and weathered texture reminiscent of cliffs in a humid biome like this one. 

Populating a vast landscape can often be challenging, especially for this one due to the important number of trees and dense flora. Many instances were required to cover all the terrain, and I regret not using .ass files at the time, which would have helped optimize the scene.

To recreate natural distribution, I divided the terrain into sections and used scattering for each one, allowing for a variety of random rotations and scaling options for the trees.

                       North Cowboy 

The cowboy walked a long distance to reach his destination. He covered many kilometers before finally arriving at the vast summit, where he took a moment to rest and admire the view.

I used Gaea once again to create the various mountains that make up the environment, focusing only on modeling. Afterwards, I imported them into Houdini to achieve an optimized scene and geometry. This allowed me to have greater control over the texturing and set dressing process.

In order to get the feeling of snow pack, especcly for the foreground part I decided to create an HDA of snow generator. The HDA is structured into three methods: closed geometry, trees with leaves, and terrain. This setup allows users to switch between these different types of geometry inputs. While the process presented its challenges, it proved to be incredibly educational. Creating the HDA not only deepened my understanding of VEX but also highlighted the power of procedural tools in Houdini.

I used complex masks with VOPs and geometry parameters to make it seem like each summit was covered in snow. Then, I added snowpacks to different areas of the mountains. Finally, I layered rock textures above the snow to give the impression of wind sweeping snow across the surface.

Thank you for taking the time to read through my process. I hope it was clear and understandable. I enjoyed delving into environment TD work and methods this year, and I can't wait to further enhance my skills by learning new ones!