Im pritty new to houdini but sussed the basics and can make stuff in my own way.

However I am trying to create a 3D landscape to use as an image.

Is there a way to add multiple textures to say a grid SOP that i sculpted, mountain, deformed into a basic landscape?

I have tried adding to geometry groups, group paint to ‘paint’ tips of mountaints etc to have them merge into a 2nd texture, or paint areas of floor to have them different texture to add a bit of variation, ie sand to rocky if you get what i mean.

Any other tips for making a landscape I would also love.

Currently i start with a basic grid, add a uvtexture/project -> mountainsop, sub div, sculpt, then add doodads

I did manage to use the materialsop to sort of work, but it wouldnt recognise the groups i created so had to physically select prims, also it wasnt a smooth transition at all

Thanks for any help

This sort of thing in Houdini is very possible.To kick you off Ive done you a simple scene showing overrides in action. You can set up any attribute in the shader to be over ridden using the material SOP. The example shows the override of the shaders base colour.

Note the use of the group SOP to create the second group out of the remains of the first and the the use of opname() to automate the naming of the group using the name of the node in the SOP network.

Blending between primitive groups with overrides in a procedural way is not something I know off hand, but if I was using texture maps for my diffuse I would be painting my blend in photoshop between the various UV sets.

Rob

Thanks for taking the time to do this, this is pritty much along the lines i was heading.

Unfortunatly the version of houdini at uni is 11. something and when i open the file it is all unplugged, i tried to reconnect it all but it all comes out grey.

But from what i understand of the structure 2 groups are made, group 2 being =/ to all but group 1 in the combine tab.

then using the material sop to overide the the variable for the group, in this case the base color value.

But yes, i was planning to composite in photoshop to go at it with the textures properly

On another note, would you have any tips at all for creating a natural-ish looking landscape base. currently i have been experementing with mounts sop, sculpt, smooth, etc

But have looked at displacements

Thanks again Rob

My attack plan for this type of project would be 3d camera projections in Nuke onto geometry thats made in Houdini and brought into Nuke. You can then render out of Nuke for matte painting and then project. Ive worked on lots of shows where this is now the norm.

Rob