Ok I know this is a bit sick to ask but can houdini be used to create realistic destruction of human flesh? And not just flesh actually but everything you would expect to be on a human character, such as bones, blood, cloth etc?

The reason I ask is that I am interested in creating pre-rendered 2D sprites to use in a video game. The idea is to model a 3D skeleton, then put some meat/muscles on it, then some skin, then clothing etc and then give realistic properties to each (bone breaks like bone, blood comes flying out of the meat when blown apart, clothing reacts realistically to fire or other damage etc). Examples of the intended simulations include being blown apart, burned, shot, crushed, sliced and/or stabbed.

Is this possible or am I being overambitious? And what are the system requirements for running such simulations? I have seen some very scary numbers for some complex fluid ones but I hope ones such as this don't take as long.

Houdini can be used to do all of these…
you'll want to look at the docs and for tutorials on FEM