I've been considering purchasing Houdini to speed up my level design workflow. I've seen some people using curves and lines to displace geometry and quickly build rooms, doors and hallways. I'm used to old level design tools like Hammer and Radiant.

Is there any specific tutorial or documentation on this subject? I mean, how to quickly design a floorplan, extrude it, and get some rooms rolling?

I think Bioware (or someone else) presented something about this a while back at GDC or something, but here is something from Side Effects:

http://www.sidefx.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=2017&Itemid=354 [sidefx.com]

This video alludes to using Houdini (hscript I think) to generate the Level from 2d blueprints, but isn't a real tutorial:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ugNTuM6FyV4 [youtube.com]

Just searching for ‘ Houdini Level Design ’ finds these:

http://odforce.net/?p=1541 [odforce.net]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zn2QS4sh-9k [youtube.com]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7BXlNx8HubM [youtube.com]

Some of the paid training from GaTu addresses Houdini's role in game creation, any may be worth investigating.



http://www.gametutor.com/live/tutorials/houdini/ [gametutor.com]

craiglhoffman
Just searching for ‘ Houdini Level Design ’ finds these:

http://odforce.net/?p=1541 [odforce.net]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zn2QS4sh-9k [youtube.com]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7BXlNx8HubM [youtube.com]

The problem is that those videos are related to procedural level generation, not design. It's just generating random stuff based on an algorithm. I want a tool that allows me to draw geometry easily.

So far, i've decided to use SketchUp, which is really good at drawing stuff quickly. Not so good at producing decent geometry and UV maps, though.

craiglhoffman
This video alludes to using Houdini (hscript I think) to generate the Level from 2d blueprints, but isn't a real tutorial:

This is amazing, though. Any ideas of how such a thing can be done in Houdini?

you could draw floor plans in a 2d app then bring them in and use the Trace SOP to get curves…

it is also worth to note that you can import eps files in Houdini, then wire them to a digital asset which generates your white box level designs (I have built many digital assets which take eps, ai, svg and generate 3D models out of them).

I would recommend though looking into some tutorials to understand the paradigms of development in Houdini. Ultimately, you can do anything you can dream of in there with little coding (great if you have an idea of how you want to work and want to put something in place quickly) , but it takes some time to get used to the philosophy