Master Liquid Simulation in Houdini
The Gnomon Workshop has released Liquid Simulation in Houdini, a guide to fluid simulation in the procedural 3D software recorded by VFX artist Stavros Sofianos.
The workshop, which is aimed at intermediate-level artists, provides over three hours of video training in Houdini and the Arnold renderer.
Create art-directable fluid simulations in Houdini
In the workshop, Sofianos reveals how to use Houdini’s FLIP fluids and rigid body dynamics toolsets to create a dynamic, art-directable simulation of milk pouring into a bowl of cereal, including the initial splash and pieces of cereal beginning to float as the liquid level rises.
He begins by creating various layers of cereal and placing them in a way that will subsequently create a pleasing splash, using a Voronoi fracture technique to create proxies that can be used in a RBD simulation to generate the initial state of the cereal in the bowl.
Sofianos then discusses how to reconnect the proxies to the original geometry for the cereal, how to create the emitters for the FLIP simulation, how to control the ‘stickiness’ of the milk against the bowl and the cereal, and how to set up FLIP and RBD solvers to interact efficiently.
This workshop also covers how to create our a custom mesh for FLIP simulation, how to generate wet maps, and shading and rendering techniques using the Arnold renderer.
As well as the tutorial videos, viewers can download Sofianos’s final Houdini project file.
About the artist
Stavros Sofianos is a FX artist with over a decade of experience in production, working on movies, TV series and commercials for studios in his native Greece, and for clients worldwide.
Pricing and availability
Liquid Simulation in Houdini is available via a subscription to The Gnomon Workshop, which provides access to over 300 tutorials.
Subscriptions cost $54/month or $499/year. Free trials are available.
Read more about Liquid Simulation in Houdini on The Gnomon Workshop’s website
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