Playing around with Houdini 21. Threw together a quick creature mesh using a combination of primitives, VDB meshing and sculpting to create something Alien-esque. Wanted to look more into Solaris and the USD workflow. Rendered in Karma with some very simple shading and a slap-comp in COPS. Nothing overly complex.
Unity 2022.3 URP Large Performant Open World
16km2 Using a mix of custom and third party foliage. Buto for fog and atmospherics. GPU Instancing with optimised LOD’s to sustain 120+ fps. Microverse for Terrain.
Unity Further Terrain Exploration
Going for a dark and atmospheric tone. 2km x 2km comprised of 4 terrains. Unity URP, Microverse, Microsplat, Buto, Nature Renderer
Unity Terrain with Microverse
Playing around with Microverse from the Asset Store in combination with Nature Renderer. This is using the core modules and sample assets from both packages. HDRP and custom post processing and lighting. Only a small terrain size approx 2k x 2k.
Unity 2020.1 HDRP Terrain RnD
I have a passion for creating large open world terrains and filling them with stuff. Having said that I’ve yet to find a pipeline that I am entirely happy with - one that lets me work quickly, largely procedurally, and delivers a high degree of control at the same time as good quality results. I’ve tinkered with Houdini, World Machine, World Creator and others, but find those pipelines somewhat cumbersome and often slow when dealing with very large terrains. The following images are from some recent tests using new features in Map Magic 2 for Unity. The terrain is roughly 16km square with dense grass coverage and forests. Leveraging Nature Renderer, the Vegetation Engine and Amplify Imposters results in a 100fps+ frame rate when rendering with HDRP at 1080p with volume lighting and heavy post-processing. Although somewhat lacking in variation and detail this large open space took very little time to build which leaves exponentially more time to spend on details where they matter.
Halloween 2020
Created in C4D using poly modeling and volume builder for the pumpkin and Forester for the foliage. Rendered with Redshift.
Houdini Engine & Unreal
I’ve been thinking about more convenient ways of geenrating large scale terrains for Unreal and Unity for some time now. Pipelines involving World Machine or World Creator are fine, but those tools require a lot of back and forth between the source project files and the final output, with a lot of manual exporting and hooking up of files. Enter Houdini Engine and Houdini Digital Assets. The following images show a 64 square km terrain procedurally generated within Unreal using a custom built terrain HDA. This handles all the terrain layers and foliage scattering. It also shows some early work-in-progress road / path generation (more in a later post). Nothing has been manually adjusted or assigned within Unreal.
Houdini Mograph
Playing around with Houdini to generate simple animating FUI elements.
The shapes are all deformed via attribute VOPs using noise.
Unity Terrain Tests
Having fun with Unity terrains, CTS and Enviro. Terrain height-map generated using World Creator. Grading and post with Unity's Post Processing Stack...
Planet Display
C4D, X-Particles, Octane.
Abstract Solar
Messing around with X-Particles in C4D. Rendered in Octane. Minor post work in Photoshop.
C4D TurbulenceFD Redshift
Figuring out Redshift volume rendering with simple TurbulenceFD sim.
Abstract Landscape & Atmosphere
Octane scattering medium / atmospherics test. Nothing fancy, going for something a bit abstract.
Octane Scatter test
Just a quick test using the Octane Scatter object in C4D.
TurbulenceFD & Octane render
Gaseous explosion test using C4D / TurbulenceFD and rendered using Octane.
Character Render - Octane
This is a surfacing and lighting test of a model I had lying around that I purchased from CGTrader. Planning on doing a short CG piece with this (and other assets) over the coming months. Since I don't have time these days to model something from scratch I want to focus more on surfacing, lighting and post. This is a work in progress snapshot of getting decent skin and clothing setup.
More C4D & Octane render fun
X-Particles used to generate trails on turbulence displaced particle motion.
Having fun with TurbulenceFD and Octane
Nothing too fancy, just getting my head around the Octane volume medium on a TFD sim. Starting to narrow things down to a good set of parameters.
More C4D / Octane Experimentation
Inspired by title sequences like those in Black Sails. Not sure where things were going beyond that but I liked certain qualities in this. Just having fun!
Octane Material Mix
Layering materials and displacement...