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TOTAL DURATION: 1h 2m 59s

A great way to understand Houdini’s node-based workflow is to explore it in the context of a project. It is important to start learning how to think and work procedurally. In this lesson, you will learn how to create your own custom brickify tool using procedural nodes and networks to define its function and interface.

Along the way you will get to use different aspects of Houdini’s workspace. By learning how to use these UI elements together, you will dive deeper into Houdini’s node-based workflow. The lessons will then give you a chance to put your ideas into practice, which is one of the best ways to learn.

This is an updated version of this H19.5 Lesson.

DOWNLOAD PDF | Step by Step
Introduction [2:50]
An overview of all the lessons being taught in this tutorial to help you figure out where this project is headed.
1 | Create a Single Brick [7:03]
To get started, you will build a model of a single brick that you will later copy onto points to create the brickified shape. You will create this brick using a combination of polygon modelling tools. Along the way, you will see how each action you take creates a node in Houdini. These nodes create a recipe of the steps that can be used to create the brick geometry.
2 | Copy Bricks to a Point Cloud [7:17]
You are now going to use a Rubber Toy model to generate a cloud of points that fit within its boundaries. The brick you created in the last section will then be instanced to the 3D grid to create a brickified version of the model. The instancing is generated by packing the brick geometry before instancing them to the points.
3 | Color the Points using a Texture [5:11]
Earlier you added a color attribute to the points which affects the coloring of the brick instances. Instead of using a single color, you are now going to use a texture map to create a more interesting look for the bricks. This will involve some VOP nodes to convert the texture from vertex colors to point colors.
4 | Create a Brickify Digital Asset [12:51]
Now that the brickify recipe is working and the nodes are wired together properly, you are going to wrap up the nodes to create a single Houdini Digital Asset [HDA] node. Now you can share parameters from within the network to the top level to create an interface that can generate unique results each time the asset is used.
5 | Animate the Bricks [9:18]
To continue adding features to the asset, you will create an automated animation of the bricks building up from the ground. This will involve adding more nodes to the network to make sure the asset has this new functionality. Once the new nodes are saved to the digital asset file and parameters have been promoted, the features will be available for use by anyone using this asset in their work.
6 | Create a Peg Board [8:00]
To prepare for rendering, create a peg board for the brickified shapes to sit on. You will borrow some of the geometry from the single brick and use that to copy to the points of a grid. These will be combined with a box that you bevel to create rounded edges.
7 | Render the Final Shot [10:29]
To create the final shot, you are going to bring the geometry into the Solaris or LOPS context of Houdini. LOPS are used to prepare the scene for rendering. You will set up materials that make use of the point colors on the bricks and then set up lights and a camera for the final rendering. You will render a still image then an animated sequence using the brickify tool’s animate feature.

CREATED BY

rmagee
ROBERT MAGEE

Robert Magee is a Senior Product Marketing Manager at SideFX who has been working with Houdini for 20 years. He has created lots of learning material and demos designed to help artists understand how going procedural with Houdini can benefit their work.

More from Robert Magee

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