Hello Houdini Hive Mind!

Bit of background - I use Houdini to create pre-viz renders for clients hosting large scale events at my venue - think big awards show / dinners / corporate hospitality. Before Houdini we used a lighting design software called WYSIWYG by CAST software. While the ligthing engine in WYG is great, the renders are not that impressive - and lack the wow factor we can get from Houdini.

However, WYG can do a cool semi-real-time volume light effect (simulating haze from smoke machines etc) - i've attached a render from WYG showing 2 things…

1> the renders look pretty weak
2> the volume light effect (smoke / haze) i'm trying and failing to recreate in houdini.

My goal is to have something cheap to render but creates a similar effect to the attached. which i'll then be able to comp on top of the beauty pass in photoshop.

I've done a forum search which has given me some info and the manual seems to be geared toward high end hero smoke and clouds. and my own personal test seem to lack subtlety - big blobs of volume hanging in space!

Can someone detail a workflow for creating such a lighting effect? Doesn't have to be specifically volume related - i've even tried texture mapped cones!

Many thanks for any help you can offer.

Rick.

I have done this sort of things with scaled tubes converted to a volume and parent to spot lights…I grues these days I would use vdb. You can use noise in the volumeVop to articulate the look.

Here's an example file using plain old volumes. I don't think VDB grids would work as well as volumes in this case. Constant tile volumes do the job well in this case.

Just parent an object to the light and put a Volume SOP down set to frustum type.

sl0throp & jeff,

Thanks you so much for the info - much appreciated!

Rick.

edit - Just taken a look - wow 2 nodes - Houdini is insanely versatile.

thanks for taking the time to post that up jeff.

This makes me smile! I haven't used WYSIWYG much myself, but working quite a bit as a lampie before I've been around it a lot. Now changing careers into 3D and Houdini this is impressive to see, I never thought anyone would use Houdini for this. I would love to see something you've rendered if you want to share

I never thought anyone would use Houdini for this. I would love to see something you've rendered if you want to share Smile

Thanks Skybar, i'm from a techie background too - originally a Sound Engineer. I'm now a Production Manager dealing with client tenders and pre-viz. I know a lot of production companies in the UK use 3ds Max and C4D so its becoming quite common to see fancy 3d visuals for big clients.

I've been a hobbyist fan of Houdini for years so it when we looked at improving our pre-viz offering I was in a position to recommend Houdini.

attached is an example of the work we send to clients before they even sign a contract to tempt them to choose our production team - i still consider myself a Houdini newb, and learning all the time - please don't judge to harshly!

Rick.

Looks quite nice! Good work man, keep it up