3D environment Houdini + Redshift Tides Tutorial

hi my name is Ogie hello and the VFX supervisor and cg magic and today we're going to work on a shot that I'm creating for a TV series about some indigenous tribes in Brazil that lived for more than 5,000 years in a total urban area and for today's shot are going to approach the close-up shot of these dressed tide changes it's not the daily tide changes a seasonal thing that comes from the like a dry season with like many months totally dry and some shoot and we're going to use ho genie in red ship for this shot the reference is this frame there is a time-lapse a frame from a time-lapse from National Geographic in the same area and this type of just show that the water coming up and very like a big difference in the water so there's a lot of techniques that's a good cover I hope you enjoy it please subscribe I'm going to keep posting these tutorials and let's dive in okay so let's start placing a height field note change the grid scale to something is more if you want like more revolution remember that you can always come back and change it later and let's add a nice now add a draw curve and let's use the XZ plane on it so we can project the line on the XZ plane now we need to resample it so we have more uniform points in my case I thought 20 in the laughs was a good number the new sweep node and Houdini lets you select around tube geometry so you don't need to wear the second input so now we can play with the scale along the curve and give it a bit more interesting shape we can always come back and change this later when we see how this is applied to our terrain let's add a mask by object node and increase the blur a bit so we have a mask that we can change anytime we want just changing our curve input you can use the spheres cubes any type of geometry for masking your height field place your height field mask by object node before your height field noise invert the mask and don't forget to uncheck the center noise now we can play with the scale and amplitude of the noise until find something that we like now we can go back to our sweet note and increase the width so we can make our river larger let's repeat this process and create another suite using the same curve this time let's make it fit on [Music] plug into another noise this time click in Center noise and blow a bit the radius play with the settings we have now a variation on our reverb and this is also a good way to create a beach repeat it one more time but we use the first sweep load and invert the mask so now we can affect the top flat part of all terrain so let's blur the radio's a bit so we can have a softer transition and let's add another height field noise you can also change the type of noise and keep playing with the amplitude in the element size when you find something that you like to give it more variation place a distort note we will do these in two stages in the first one we're going to use a very big element size like 1500 so we affect the general shape now we can use the small element size to give more details to the surface and let's play also with the amplitude and you will find something that we're pleased with now let's use a nice clear node so we can just see the whole terrain without this red mark on top now place a road note but remember that this is a time dependent node so press play and see how it affect stop when you are happy with it if you also have a problem with the viewport create a new viewport and the problem is solved inside the road node play with the colors in the gradient ramp if you want to better visualize your terrain by default our terrain is a thousand by a thousand meters for us we need much smaller terrain so let's use a Jeff X form to change the scale without losing the resolution I want something like 50 by 50 meters so 0.05 is the number to go [Music] you see the same resolution [Music] the right scale in terrain can be tricky so I'm using Tommy geo just to have a more clear reference of it so I decided to make it even smaller like 0.04 or 40 by 40 meters [Music] let's create a grid and change the color just to visualize how our water plane is going to interact me forward terrain [Music] yes great now I'm back inside rage after rain we are going to use a mask by feature node and we can now create masks that will later be used to define different material areas for our terrain for this first mask I'm using mask by slope and using something that would select just the more vertical areas and edge of our River when you are happy with your mask place a height field output node so we can export this map I'm going to export at Point E X our 4k map will save the mask into the Alpha Channel and now to remap it from 0 to 1 so we know our map will be black to white I created two more Maps one for the bottom later and another one just to give a bit more variance to the bottom one for those Maps I selected mask by height instead of slope and just select the very bottom of all terrain so now let's create another geo node and let's add an object merge to it so we can bring our terrain in so let's convert this terrain to real geometry using height field convert play with the density if you need more or less resolution geo terrain great we don't need to worry with UV s height fill terrain already gave us good flat UV so I am using quits on Maggie scans for my textures I recommend it but feel free to bring your own textures I'm choosing three different textures for my terrain I want like a clay texture kind of a grass texture and a mud one so now I have all three textures inside my material tab and I'm going to create a new RS material builder node and I'm going to cut and paste each material sided in my case I used three different ones so now let's bring on the masks that we saved from our terrain with the height field output node before we start to render let the sunlight or sky down and adjust your render settings and let's place a camera I personally like to test each material individually so we can see more details like the scale and other parameters as well because my terrain already have a lot of details I decided not to use a displacement node and instead only the normal mapping to a bump map node and don't forget to change it from height field to tangent normal yeah it's looking great so let's start layering the materials use a material blender note the order is important each layer number is on top of the other one this is the opposite of Photoshop layers [Music] the blend color input is where you should add your mask because it is in the Alpha Channel use a color splitter node and drag the output to the blend color input like that repeat this process for all the lives [Music] yes I'm really like it not forget the power of Houdini procedural workflow we could always go back to our draw curve and change the shape of our River and all the masks would be adjusted automatically I reuse it one of the materials in the bottom to create a better blend for the scene now let's add another geo node and bring your training this is for the scattering the vegetation we will create different scatter nodes for different type of assets like one for grass one for bushes and one for trees this way we have more control over the placement now let's add some masks to select where you want to scatter the points I'm using the mask by feature and selecting by height as an attribute to create the scatter node and make the adjustments don't forget to uncheck keep bringing terrain and match slope normal interaction give realization to up a small number something like three four five and full 360 degrees to the yaw now it's time to bring our vegetation I have a library of plants I created and save it as an RS proxy files they are ready fully textured and ready to go I have this pack available for purchase and three free assets as well the link is below these assets are a lifesaver and save you so much time instead of adding plants and texturing as well even if you don't want to use my library pack I recommend you create your own please subscribe and I will post another video step by step in how to create your library as well for these I use the node called arrest in stencil from Sawa Spinoza the link is below it optimized a lot of how to bring your RS proxies into your scene so let's add a line and then an attribute create node change the name to wait this way we can control the proportion of one specific asset into the scene don't forget to change the type to primitive the value will control the proportion in relation to the other attribute wait nodes repeat the process for as many assets that you are going to scatter in your scene even if you're not using the instance or node just plug an object mode into your scene and use the same attribute create node merge all and plug it into the third input of your scatter node for the instance our node we have one additional step of diving into the scatter node and changing it from centroid to origin in the copy to points to null now add the instance for node and rename the tag attribute the same as your scatter node add the number of objects you have and drag them into each slot my case is 3 change the number of each slot input to match a merge node [Music] now adjust the settings for the amount of instances their outer radius contributes even more to the amount of scatter points than the coverage attribute so for something is more use a tiny outer radius I have a way of working with howdini and because it's procedural my idea is that you should keep moving forward because you can always come back and make adjustments so at this point I wasn't happy with my grass but I kept moving and decided to deal with that later now let's repeat the process for scattering the bushes [Music] [Music] yes cool I like it so now let's still the same thing for the trees [Music] [Music] okay great so now let's fix the scene and add more dimension to it so it doesn't look so empty duplicator terrain and the scatter geo notes so for the background terrains we don't need the same resolution so we can reduce the density of the height field convert node you could also use the poly reduce node and would take more time to cook so now let's use a new node as the parent for the background terrain and scatter so we can translate them both at the same time make sure that your object mode is statue into specified object otherwise it won't move so let's duplicate it one more time we have a problem the tree in the background are not showing up let's fix this issue because our mask is procedural we use the height to make a selection but when we place the background terrain and move it by 46 centimeters down in the y-axis so we need to bring the same difference to my mask selection [Music] that is better but let's increase the size of the bushes and the amount of trees yeah much much better now so now let's work in the water shader create an RS material builder change the preset Jawara add subsurface mud scattering so we can add more depth to the water play with the color and the studies until you are happy in my case I wanted this dense brownish look to it for creating a more dense atmospheric look I decided not to add an EVD B but instead change the volumetric scattering into our redshift render node play with the settings until you are happy with the results the main settings are schedule amount attenuation and the color of both fog and scattering [Music] great we're almost there now let's take care of the water a dismal ocean from the ocean shelf Minh delete the internal volume we want needed change the settings in the ocean spectral load increased resolution 11 is great reduce the wind speed and the scale because it is a small area we don't need to worry with masking patches to give variation to the scene we need to export the maps to displace our ocean grid using redshift there are two ways let's start exporting the displacement maps go to the ocean preview node check the UV attribute change the basic settings and let's save it to dot EXR format and keep it to 32 bits check bake all displacements to one layer and change the resolution I chose 4k press save to disk and wait let's go for the second method dive inside the ocean preview note right click and press LOL ching of contents if locked at the bottom right corner you find a cop network named baked maps double click on it the second method is better used for small ripples and wakes because it will export the kiss maps that will drive a bump map and not the displacement map inside the cop network in the top right you find a gem curse single node plug the rock output to this node so we can export the cursed maps adjust the basic settings like resolution where to save it in the frame range click Remer and wait back to our ocean hood create a grid a UV project and initialize it to the best plane and add a material node in your material water shader add a texture load your displacement map if you want real displacement in your one plug it to displacement input in the redshift material don't forget to enable displacement in your object go into the redshift object tab and clicking on enable displacement if you just want to use a band map as we described in our second method load the cursed Maps use a bitmap node and prove the map input now you can disable the displacement on your object let's try both if you don't see a big difference I suggest you just keep with the bat map because it will render much faster finally let's animate our camera and in my case I will also wanna made the water plane so we can show the different tides because it is a seasonal tide and not a daily one I decided not to use a wet map so it doesn't give the impression of short period of time for the tides if you want to learn how to create a web map please watch my free tutorial about that the link is below [Music] [Music] I really hope you liked this tutorial and you were able to add a few more weapons to your skill set don't forget to subscribe if you want to see more tutorials like that [Music] you [Music]

Channel: CG Imagine

Views: 10,546

Rating: 4.9793282 out of 5

Keywords: houdini course, hf terrains, 3d illustration, redshift, cgi course, sidefx houdini, texturing, houdini tutorial, 3d nature, houdini ocean, houdini tools, free 3d course, cg environment, speedtree, scatter node, free course, houdini tutorial free, sss redshift, 3d plants, Learn houdini, free course 3d, redshift ocean, displacement maps, 3d volumetric redshift, render redshift, water displacement, concept art, houdini terrains, houdini terrain course

Id: Qj54ifydULo

Length: 26min 4sec (1564 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 23 2020