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Procedural dungeon - Houdini and Substance

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Zack Maxwell interpolator
For the past couple of months, I've been learning Houdini so that I can expand my skill set in creating procedural assets to models as well as textures.
Combining Houdini with substance designer, I expect to be able to create some insane things.
I'm finally at a point now where I can create things of real value in Houdini, so I'm working on a set of procedural assets for a Gothic dungeon.

First up, I've created a set of stairs. It still needs a bit of improvement.


I'll be leaving the texturing for last, after all the models are completed. I expect them all to be tweaked pretty heavily along the way, and I wouldn't want to have to redo the textures.

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  • LorasTyrell
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    LorasTyrell polycounter lvl 5
    :open_mouth: this sounds like it's gonna be really cool, I look forward to seeing how you get on! Houdini seems so fascinating
  • Poinball
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    Poinball polycounter lvl 6
    I will follow you ! It starting to be interesting
  • almighty_gir
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    almighty_gir ngon master
    I would say your first task would be:
    As the stairs get higher, you need to increase the number of steps, instead of scaling the existing steps upward.
  • Zack Maxwell
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    Zack Maxwell interpolator
    I would say your first task would be:
    As the stairs get higher, you need to increase the number of steps, instead of scaling the existing steps upward.
    The number of steps already increases.
    I basically have a curve aligned at the top and bottom of the stairs. The number of steps is based on the length of that curve. The height/length of the steps is based on the slope of that curve.
    Adjusting the number of steps would not give the effect you're expecting. I don't think it's physically possible to ignore the slope like that, maintaining a uniform size.
  • Zack Maxwell
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    Zack Maxwell interpolator
    More progress on the procedural staircase. I've improved the appearance all around, and added a base platform. I also culled out a bunch of the interior faces, saving texture space.

  • Lucas Annunziata
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    Lucas Annunziata polycounter lvl 14
    @Grimwolf This is really interesting stuff you have here. Have you been following along with any specific learning resources for houdini? Are you planning on exporting different static versions of these to an engine or will these recipes be brought into unreal 4 through the plugin?
  • Zack Maxwell
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    Zack Maxwell interpolator
    @Grimwolf This is really interesting stuff you have here. Have you been following along with any specific learning resources for houdini? Are you planning on exporting different static versions of these to an engine or will these recipes be brought into unreal 4 through the plugin?
    I went through a bunch of different tutorials to learn the basics, but I haven't been following anything specific.
    I did originally go through the GameTutors stair tutorial to figure out the basic way to approach this piece, but their approach was so flawed I wound up changing 90% of it, and even that only covered the steps themselves.
    I'm planning to sell the digital assets on the unity marketplace, but if I want to sell it on the Unreal Engine marketplace, I will have to export various static versions, since they do not currently allow Houdini engine digital assets.
    SideFX do seem to be open to the idea of placing Houdini engine directly on the Unreal Engine marketplace if there is a demand, which would allow Houdini digital assets to be sold there. So I may wait on that before releasing it for Unreal Engine.
  • swann
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    swann polycounter lvl 4
    They had Houdini Engine in Unity Asset Store. That's what left from it https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/content/21486.
    It would be better if they would not not bother anybody with UE4 marketplace if they plan to be as commited to supporting that idea like Unity one.
  • Zack Maxwell
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    Zack Maxwell interpolator
    Holy crap, that's unfortunate. I wonder why they let that happen.
    Hm... That might have something to do with why I haven't been able to find any Houdini digital assets on the unity market place, despite knowing they were there in the past.
    I might have to find a different place to sell them altogether. Nobody uses Orbolt, and I think I would have difficulty getting traffic to my Gumroad page. Gumroad may still be the best option, though...
  • Erwannd2d
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    Erwannd2d polycounter lvl 2
    If this is made for a game I would definetly see some kind of realtime animation of the stairs growing in front of the player in a kind of magic fashion  :o
  • RustySpannerz
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    RustySpannerz polycounter lvl 14
    Houdini seems so cool, definitely something I'd like to try out at some point.
  • nekromantikko
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    nekromantikko polycounter lvl 2
    Followed! I've just started learning Houdini myself so this'll be cool : D
  • jose.fuentes
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    jose.fuentes interpolator
    oh man, i dont know Houdini, but I wish i could do these type of things in maya
  • kio
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    kio polycounter lvl 16
    to me it looks like all of the three offical houdini-engine platforms are still activly developed for:

    https://github.com/sideeffects/HoudiniEngineForMaya
    https://github.com/sideeffects/HoudiniEngineForUnity
    https://github.com/sideeffects/HoudiniEngineForUnreal

    but ye for selling stuff its a kind of heavy dependency - not sure how well this works.



  • Zack Maxwell
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    Zack Maxwell interpolator
    Menchen said:
    Damm, houdini definitely looks like a miraculous tool, for environment designing it has to be awesome to have some procedural assets rather than just following limited modular assets...

    I looks scary too, is it too hard to get into it?
    It does have a really steep learning curve. It has a lot of awesome tutorials available, though. SideFX themselves maintain a massive library on their site, and it has great documentation available. The community is also very helpful on the SideFX forums, and they have one of the best support teams I've dealt with.
    It took me a couple months to get where I'm at right now.

    Some tutorial links:
    Documentation
    SideFX
    Rohan Dalvi (Paid)
    Rohan Dalvi (Free)
    MIX
  • swann
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    swann polycounter lvl 4
    Grimwolf said:
    I might have to find a different place to sell them altogether. Nobody uses Orbolt, and I think I would have difficulty getting traffic to my Gumroad page. Gumroad may still be the best option, though...
    Well, it's a TD tool, what you expect? Everybody in Houdini community are doing their own tools.
    As for selling stuff to other people (non-houdini ones). It would work if company approach was a little different.

    To put it into perspective, so that you would understand what I think about SESI and their approach this days:

    - in 2013 Side Effects showed Houdini Engine.
    - 5 years latter (almost 2018), how many places actually use it?  How many job offers actually mentions them?

    - in 2013 Allegorithmic showed Substance Designer. Before 2013 they almost didn't existed. Biggest achievement was some shitty plugin for Modo.
    - 5 years latter they are everywhere, Have at least 2 very successful products. Almost every realtime focused job offer, on every continent, mentions them.

    Do a test. Give yourself 2 hours, and try to find as many still actual job offers for Houdini and Substance online as you can. Reality is, if you by accident don't live in Canada (and maybe some parts of US) bubble, chances of finding realtime focused (non VFX) Houdini job goes down very fast. Curve is probably as step as learning curve for this product.

    There are many things that Side Effects did very wrong over the last 5 years that lead to this slow adoption rate, compared to Allegorithmic. And I don't think they are willing to fix them. They just don't have it in their DNA.

    kio said:
    to me it looks like all of the three offical houdini-engine platforms are still activly developed for:

    https://github.com/sideeffects/HoudiniEngineForMaya
    https://github.com/sideeffects/HoudiniEngineForUnity
    https://github.com/sideeffects/HoudiniEngineForUnreal

    but ye for selling stuff its a kind of heavy dependency - not sure how well this works.
    Question was about marketplace support, not about if they still develop them.
    If Houdini Engine was removed from Unity Asset Store, there is no point in asking for UE4 marketplace support, because you can expect that they will be as commited to this idea as to the Unity one.



  • Zack Maxwell
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    Zack Maxwell interpolator
    I've been working on a rope chandelier now.
    I decided to target these assets for a Castlevania-esque sidescroller. I'm still relatively new to using Houdini, and the limited perspective will make it a lot easier.
    The chandelier is intended to double as a platform.

  • Zack Maxwell
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    Zack Maxwell interpolator
    Okay, I've made some huge improvements to the chandelier. Not only does it just look less crap in general, but I think I've nailed down the aesthetic more effectively.

    I'm mildly concerned about the polycount. It's sitting at approximately 2k polygons right now (count scales up with size).
    Considering that it's aimed at sidescrollers, and it's relatively large so you'll only see 2-3 onscreen at a time, I don't think it should be an issue.
  • shabba
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    shabba polycounter lvl 15
    Maybe given the height/placement of the chandelier and its aimed at sidescrollers, so the asset will be much smaller. I bet you could get away with just having intersecting cards mapped to a tileable 'chain' material, and you can just keep scaling the length of the poly/uvs. The normals/alphas /w intersecting cards would likely hold up given its use.
  • Zack Maxwell
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    Zack Maxwell interpolator
    I thought about the card approach, but in looking around it seemed that modern games have abandoned that approach to chains. I assume because it's no longer necessary to go that far.
    I'll probably just have to test it out. If it winds up being too much, it would be easy enough to replace it with cards later. 
  • Joopson
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    Joopson quad damage
    Maybe I'm a wasteful heathen, but I wouldn't lose any sleep over 2k polygons.

    I do, however, dislike how the polygons are distributed. The chains take up so many of the polygons, while the chandelier itself is pretty jagged. I'd do what Shabba said, and use a tiling texture on some planes for the chains, and add some more polygons to the rest of it instead.
  • Zack Maxwell
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    Zack Maxwell interpolator
    Ooo... I probably should go with the cards. Necessary or not, it dropped the polycount from 2000 to 700.
  • Zack Maxwell
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    Zack Maxwell interpolator
    God I love Houdini. I was able to create a switch that flips between fully modeled chain links and cards. This will make it incredibly easy to test them both, and get the best balance of appearance and performance.
  • Zack Maxwell
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    Zack Maxwell interpolator
    Well, I fucked up a little.
    You see, nearly every Houdini tutorial is made with VFX in mind. The biggest problem inherent in this did not occur to me until I started trying to work on UV mapping and texturing.
    Because of the need for normal mapping and the need to avoid excessive polygons or UV splits, you cannot have an asset with parameters which significantly alter the underlying geometry.
    I had assumed this was fine, because I've seen plenty of video game demonstrations which seemed to do exactly this. In hindsight though, those assets they showcased were chosen very carefully.
    Pretty much all walls, cables, and pillars. Or the occasional asset made of individual segments, like a rope bridge or wooden fence.

    Something like extending a wall or a cable is fine. But even something like scaling a beveled cube botches everything up, because you can't scale up the material with it while maintaining the position of the bevels in the normal map.
    This means that neither of the previous assets I made are actually usable in a game. I'll have to completely redesign them.

    I mean the chandelier is probably okay, if I just get rid of the scaling.
    The stairs are definitely not okay.
  • Dash-POWER
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    Dash-POWER polycounter lvl 6
    Very nice stuff. :smile: I have recently tried Houdini in UE4 and it has nice potential with Houdini UE4 plugin. But then I realize that I probably can't pass my exposed parameters to some blueprints. I didn't find any relevant info if I can connect houdini asset to a blueprint and control exposed parameters through functions or any other game logic. :disappointed:
  • Zack Maxwell
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    Zack Maxwell interpolator
    I believe there is a way to use a digital asset in a blueprint, but you can't control the parameters of the asset inside it. They get baked down into static meshes before runtime, and blueprints are active at runtime.
  • Dash-POWER
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    Dash-POWER polycounter lvl 6
    Yep, you had right. I found this thread. In a blueprint there is option to use Cast To houdini component but I don't think it will change something at runtime as you said.
  • Zack Maxwell
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    Zack Maxwell interpolator
    I've now put together the base for a tool to let me draw out the terrain in the side-scroller.
    Once I figured out the process, it was a lot simpler than expected.
    I've got another tool for drawing out walls, and one for drawing platforms.
    Unlike in traditional modeling, I've come to realize how important it really is to make the UVs while modeling in Houdini, rather than after. Being able to get the UVs right relies a lot on how the model was made in the first place.

  • Zack Maxwell
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    Zack Maxwell interpolator
    I have a brick wall substance material that is coming along well. I feel it still needs improvement, but it's hard to say in what way.
    Did I mention that this is all stylized? I feel like I forgot to mention that.

  • Zack Maxwell
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    Zack Maxwell interpolator
    I think I've been able to improve the brick material.
    I also vastly simplified the graph, and was even able to turn most of it into a single reusable node. I got this result by basically just plugging in a height map of the bricks and a Flood Fill to Position from the brick pattern into the node.

  • Zack Maxwell
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    Zack Maxwell interpolator
    I've now built a simple tiled stone floor.

    I'm still not very happy with this or the last material. There's something fundamentally off about them. They read as kind of "dirty", I think.
  • LorasTyrell
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    LorasTyrell polycounter lvl 5
    I think you should look at having more value differences in the material, as it's looking quite flat now. You can also use the curvature node as a mask to highlight some of the edges, which will communicate the material more clearly. Lastly, I don't know if the current lighting is showing the material in its best way. Try and use one of the lights to get more highlights and shadows, that could help too
  • Zack Maxwell
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    Zack Maxwell interpolator
    This is definitely on the right track. I took your advice and increased the color variation and curvature. I also cleaned up the edges, reduced the surface noise and added some color to the shadows.

  • pixelpatron
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    pixelpatron polycounter
    dis gonna be good.gif
  • Zack Maxwell
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    Zack Maxwell interpolator
    -Edit- Nevermind. I should create e new post to discuss the Designer > UE4 problem.
  • Zack Maxwell
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    Zack Maxwell interpolator
    I didn't have enough direction when working on it before, so I'm in the process of completely re-evaluating the materials from the start, getting the cleanest base I can.
    Here's the current state of that stone floor.

    All of the basic elements are much more clearly defined. It was a giant, random mess before.
  • Zack Maxwell
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    Zack Maxwell interpolator
    zimou13 said:
    I'd be interested to know: with any material that I try from the substance share, I get repeated houdini logos on the material while rendering. I'm currently using Apprentice. Do you see these in yours? Would these things go away by upgrading to Indie?
    Yeah, that's caused by Apprentice. Using Indie should get rid of it.
  • chinmoypborah
    This really look awesome. Thanks for sharing such a useful design. Btw I desgin in Maya 3D
    ----------------
    https://installvidmate.com/
    https://downloadluckypatcher.co/
    https://get-shareit.com/
    CartoonHD
  • chinmoypborah
    This really look awesome. Thanks for sharing such a useful design. Btw I desgin in Maya 3D
    ----------------
    https://installvidmate.com/
    https://downloadluckypatcher.co/
    https://get-shareit.com/
    CartoonHD
  • apkdodo2
    Hey, thanks for sharing this information! I love 3D animations!
  • marialovely
    thanks very much this is just amazing I want to le
    arn this can you teach me repelisplus apk gta 5 apk 
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