Project GROT

Project Grot showcases an ancient cave, illuminated by the fiery glow of molten lava, taking the viewer on a journey through the depths of an otherworldly realm. In this lesson, learn how to create these alien-looking ruins. Start by learning how to build a procedural tool that transforms a rough blockout into a detailed, high-poly mesh that can be used inside Unreal. These kinds of tools are designed to give you fast iteration times, making it easier to experiment and refine your environments efficiently.

Building on the Ruins series, this tutorial focuses on creating detailed procedural flesh tools that blend with your scene. Across six chapters, we’ll develop tools in Houdini to craft organic, fleshy structures that add a disturbing layer of detail to your environments in Unreal.

Learn how to create a bridge tool. The bridge is designed to add more structure in the GROT scene by sitting above the lava and creating interesting silhouettes. The tool is mainly controlled by a curve which drives multiple curves to define the main shape and supporting shapes.

Learn how to make a simple pyro simulation in Houdini and take that into Unreal. With Unreal 5 there is a new way to import VDB files, and with Houdini it is very easy to setup nice loopable smokes. Simply export to VDB files and import that directly in UE5.

Learn how to make terrains in Houdini then simulate Lava on top of it to create a natural and interesting effect. By using an actual solver, this makes everything look great and detailed. With the results of that simulation it will then be used to store and save data into a mesh. That mesh can be imported into Unreal and the vertex colors can be used to read back the simulation data to create color and flow in real-time.

Learn how to set up the main pathway tool of GROT. This tool will mainly involve the instancing of rocks around an input shape. An artist can block out pathway shapes with simple modelling or cubes and this tool will get the shape and place the rocks on top and add cliffs.

Learn how to turn a block-out into an interesting rock shape, complete with vertex color and ready for use in Unreal as an HDA

Learn how to make terrains in Houdini then simulate Lava on top of it to create a natural and interesting effect. By using an actual solver, this makes everything look great and detailed. With the results of that simulation it will then be used to store and save data into a mesh. That mesh can be imported into Unreal and the vertex colors can be used to read back the simulation data to create color and flow in real-time.

Learn how the rock statues were made in the GROT scene. Each statue starts with base geometry set up in a pose and then the procedural tool being created in this lesson is used to add rock details. You will begin by preparing the geometry which will then be deformed into stylized shapes. To make the look a bit more interesting, three textures are used to make sure there is variation in the statue. To complete the process, smaller details are added and the tool is wrapped up into a digital asset.