A Closer Look At Custom Houdini Tool For Procedural Waterfalls
Serge Filin revealed more about his work on HAWKED.
This waterfall tool was built by Serge Filin for HAWKED to make it easier for Level Artists to place waterfalls in the game while keeping full artistic control. The developer's task involved creating an HDA that generates procedural geometry with vertex masks, as well as building a procedural master material in Unreal Engine from scratch that uses these masks to get the right look.
"In Houdini, the HDA generated the core geometry and vertex masks; in Unreal, the master material used that data to drive blending and visual behavior in context.
What I especially like about this setup is how smoothly the procedural geometry generated in Houdini connects with master materials in Unreal Engine through vertex color attributes. That connection lets the waterfall react to surrounding geometry at the material level. For me, this kind of workflow is where Houdini and Unreal really shine together", shared Serge.
A few beauty shots showing the waterfalls up close:
Previously, we showcased Serge's Houdini-based tool for rapid 2D map creation, another tool developed for the PvPvE extraction shooter HAWKED. You can check it out below, along with other various custom tools:
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