GDC 2018 Presentations

SideFX was proud to bring the Houdini HIVE to GDC 2018. Thanks to everyone who joined us to learn more about Houdini! Also a big thanks to the talented industry professionals and SideFX technical experts who shared their knowledge through educational and inspiring presentations - showing how game artists and studios can use Houdini's procedural software to create content for games, virtual worlds and more.

Below are recordings from a few of the booth presentations. More will be added over the next few days.

Creating Real-Time Oceans for Call of Duty: WWII

MATT VITALONE | SLEDGEHAMMER

The latest Call of Duty game required realistic oceans and breaking waves on the beaches of Normandy that could run at 60fps. Find out how Houdini Ocean Toolkit and FLIP Fluids were used to build the data that drives these real-time oceans.

Cinematic VR: Immersive Storytelling with Houdini by New Reality Co

MILICA ZEC + WINSLOW PORTER | NEW REALITY CO.
TED SCHILOWITZ | PARAMOUNT PICTURES

New Reality Co., creators of the critically-acclaimed and haptically enhanced cinematic VR experiences Giant and Tree, will outline their utilization of Houdini in their first two projects, and their plans for incorporation in their next project, Breathe, which will be the final part of the trilogy. Co-Founder's Milica Zec and Winslow Porter will detail the partnership between NRC and SideFX and expand on how the process of rendering Houdini’s high-quality animations has been an advanced storytelling tool.

Creativity of Rules and Patterns: Designing Procedural Systems

ANASTASIA OPARA | SEED EA

Human mechanisms of representing the surrounding world in a form of ‘language’ is an outstanding ability that enables us to store the information as internal compact abstractions. Proceduralism is also a form of language, where we view the world through rules, dependencies and patterns. And though rules are often perceived as something rigid, their engineering is a fluid and creative task, where analyzing our own thought framework often fuels the design process.

SEED is a cross-disciplinary team within EA Worldwide Studios. SEED’s mission is to explore, build and help define the future of interactive entertainment. More: www.ea.com/seed

Procedural Tools for Building VR worlds: A case study from Marshmallow Melee

MIKE MURDOCK | TRIHELIX ///

With Houdini, you’re not just building 3d models, you’re building reusable tools for your project. For Marshmallow Melee (a toy-scale VR battle game), we created a pipeline using procedural tools that allowed the team to see more in context: lighting, shading, gameplay, and more. In this talk, you’ll see how Houdini, Substance Designer, and custom editor extensions work together to craft rich 3d game worlds for VR.

Generating HeightField Terrain Textures in Houdini 

ALEX DRACOTT

This session will be focused on generating HeightField terrain textures within Houdini. Specifically it will cover the basic pipeline of taking mask and height information from your Heightfield terrain, bringing it into a COP image network to generate textures and splat maps, and finally bringing it back onto your terrain or saving for later use.

High Quality Integrated Workflows Made Easy

MIKE LYNDON | SIDEFX

Learn how to use multiple game dev tools to quickly generate production quality fire assets and get them into your game engine. And then we'll cover some tools and techniques for getting fluid data from Houdini into your game engine..

Procedural Game Content Workflows in Houdini, Houdini Engine, and Unity

KENNY LAMMERS | INDIE PIXEL

Learn how the Houdini Engine and Procedural Content workflows can help you produce your game content faster and with the ability to change that content on the fly. In this session we will learn what the Houdini Engine is, how to install it, and how to begin incorporating procedural assets into your game content pipeline all within Unity 2017 and Houdini 16.5.

Automated Photogrammetry To Game Res Pipeline

LUIZ KRUEL | SIDEFX

As Photogrammetry becomes a deeper part of productions, the need for a pipeline emerges. Luiz will show how to use Houdini and Reality Capture to generate high resolution meshes and convert them to game ready assets in minutes.

Game Development Tips and Tricks

LUIZ KRUEL | SIDEFX

Discover the production techniques used on this year's SideFX game demo. Luiz will be sharing some details on a wide variety of tricks designed for game productions, including tips on Terrain, Houdini Engine, Sweeping Geometry, Stadium Crowds, Modelling and Texturing.

Texturing using Quixel Megascans

LUIZ KRUEL | SIDEFX

Houdini's powerful material context, combined with Mantra, allows for a new way of texturing high resolution assets. Quixel's high quality Megascans are a great compliment to that workflow; allow Luiz to teach you the fundamentals of Houdini shaders, and how to bake that information down to game ready assets.

Houdini Foundations

ROBERT MAGEE | SIDEFX

For game artists and developers who are new to Houdini, this presentation will introduce you to the concepts and ideas that make Houdini, and its procedural node-based workflow, the perfect solution for creating next level game art. You will also learn how to access Learning Paths for building up your Houdini skills.

Hex Map Generator

ANJEONG GO & FIANNA WONG | SIDEFX

There are many ways to create a game environment - we have developed an automatic map creator for strategy or RPG-style games. Using this Hex Map Generator, it is possible to iterate many times without committing to a final map design. Since you also have the freedom to change up assets, the map variations are endless! This tool allows you to layout and scatter assets on your map by masking out areas with shapes and makes use of elevations to raise terrain or inversely, bodies of water. For this presentation, we will look at the internals of the Hex Map Generator tool in Houdini, and how it works to make maps in Unreal Engine. With Houdini Engine, this tool can be used in Unity, and with some adjustments, also in Maya, Cinema 4D and 3ds Max.

Building Terrains

ARI DANESH | SIDEFX

Create realistic terrains for your games using Houdini’s height field tools. Starting from scratch, you will add patterns, noise and 3D projections to shape the terrain, then erosion tools to create added levels of realism. You will then learn how to scatter points to populate the terrain with trees, rocks, and snow.

Make More Assets

ROB STAUFFER | SIDEFX

Discover ways to rapidly create variants of game assets using Houdini's procedural workflow.  Explore methods for generating textures and geometry by iterating over value ranges (wedging). Learn how to using Houdini Engine and Hqueue for efficient batch processing, and see the resulting assets in Unreal Engine.

Game Development Made Easy Using Houdini

PAUL AMBROSIUSSEN | SIDEFX

In this presentation, Paul will demonstrate that Houdini for Game Development is NOT hard! by featuring some of the ways Game Development Tools simplify your workflow. Using the complimentary toolset in Houdini will enable you to focus on building high-quality creative experiences, rather than technical nightmares file I/O might bring with them.

Houdini Engine for Autodesk Maya & 3DS Max