ReDefine FX supervisor Sharan Vaswani has released the Populate Toolset for Houdini, a handy free tool for art directing instanced simulation caches.
The toolset, used by ReDefine on the Halo TV series, is intended to streamline workflow on animation or VFX projects in which simulations like explosions are repeated with variations across a sequence of shots.
Randomise the properties of instances, or override them individually
Provided as a set of modular .hda files, the Populate Toolset is intended to streamline workflow on projects in which one simulation – like the explosion shown in the video above – is repeated across multiple shots.
With it, artists can randomise the properties of the instances or adjust them manually to create natural-looking variation, and can quickly override individual settings to address feedback from supervisors.
Vaswani has a detailed blog post explaining how the individual tools work, which also shows the underlying VEX code, so check that out for more details.
System requirements
The Populate Toolset is compatible with Houdini 18.0+ and is optimised to run on low-end machines. It’s a free download.
Download Sharan Vaswani’s free Populate Toolset for Houdini
(The download link is at the foot of the blog post)
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