Catartsys Entertainment: Houdini's Role in Boosting the Production

Introduction

Hi! I am Anaël BELLE, I'm a Technical Artist at Catartsys Entertainment with Houdini being my specialty. I didn’t do any video game studies – instead, I learned mechanical engineering, but being an avid gamer always made me want to slip into this field.

So, I made my own way starting in 2014: first, I spent 3 years working on a virtual reality platform for medical research in Lyon learning Unity, Blender, and hardware.

Then I worked for 3 years in defense simulation (flight and tactical sims) where I was both a 3D artist (Blender, Substance 3D, Arma engine) and a GIS/procedural generation techy working on very big environments. My work there was quite interesting, but it's still classified (but yes, I used the Arma engine; it's called "VBS", it's both fun and awful to use).

Catartsys Entertainment

I've known Romain ETIENNE (CEO) for quite a while now; in 2015 he announced his intention to create a video games studio. I saw that as a big opportunity to learn, even though I never joined officially at the time. After some troubles in the team, the initial project came to a rest. We kept in contact until 2019 when we started exchanging more and more. 
It was then that I discovered Houdini and I was absolutely blown away. I NEEDED to learn this software.

I talked about it at my work but didn't get the support I expected. After some discussions, it was clear I should join Catartsys to try doing something out of it.

We kickstarted the "restart" of the business in March 2020; right along with the COVID breakout. We took the time to find what we could really do; made some mistakes and even almost closed for good; until our now-good friends from Liquidcube Games landed us a gig. A one-year gig. No need to say we went from 0 to 100.

The Catartsys team is rather small. A core associate team composed of me, Romain, and Cédric BOTTIER, both founders. I have a tools developer to work with me on our contracts and we have 3 students with us that are necessary and welcome support.

Focus on Houdini

My decision to focus on Houdini was pretty straightforward – I saw both the Ubisoft 2017 GDC about Ghost Recon Wildlands and the Houdini 17 promotional video.

Then I understood one thing – Houdini will be unavoidable for most studios in the upcoming years. So, it was opportunistic but more than that:

• I already had a good understanding of what makes a good technical artist and I always thought if I had the chance to land a job in video games it would be this;
• I was already knowledgeable in procedural generation thanks to my work on military simulators, icluding on large 3D terrain databases.
  
  

Houdini was the natural next step.

Current State of Houdini

There is little to say about Houdini's evolution in procedural generation, it's not that impressive but that's pretty understandable: Houdini already allows you to build any kind of tool. So, obviously, the impressive part comes from the community; and the updates of the half-community-managed toolbox called "SideFX Labs" counts for most of the new features, and those are pretty neat.
 
In my opinion, Houdini has two unbeatable features:

• PDG (Procedural Dependent Graph) allows you to leverage any custom process in parallel computation and it's scalable to any size of render farm making any procedural process "infinitely" scalable;
• Houdini Engine allows you to leverage Houdini's power anywhere, in any game engine making it highly "portable" (you still need the license though).

Catartsys' Services

It took us time to see where we could fit in the industry.  At the end of the day, even considering other options, we went for procedural generation tools only.

So now we provide studios with the opportunity to get tools to boost their production speed. We can start with auditing to see what they need exactly and then we either deliver work on just Houdini or create a complete toolbox for their engine. 

Using Houdini in Production

Sadly most of our work is under NDA so I'll have to talk about an internal tool that we are developing for a game we are trying to create.

We want to make a platformer with a 2D feel and 3D environments. We harnessed the Sprite Shapes in Unity that allows you to quickly draw curve-based shapes in 2D. This curve is sent in Houdini; and automatically converted into 3D, allowing the level artist to see the end result almost immediately.

On a more general note, studios often need tools for open-world environments. These worlds require roads, buildings, crops, cliffs, etc. We create the logic in Houdini and provide a custom GUI to work directly in the engine.

Advice for Houdini Beginners

Same old lame advice – practice. But more importantly, try it to know if you like it.

Houdini Apprentice is free to use (though you won't be able to use it in an engine). So get it and start following some 10 minutes tutorials on YouTube to get started. Some people even took the time to create tutorials with explicit naming, like this one.

Houdini's learning curve is known to be quite steep because tutorials are hardly enough to understand it, so join the community and start asking questions on Reddit and Discord.

Once you understand most of the software logic, challenge yourself. There is a real need for Houdini technical artists in the industry right now; so now is a good idea to start.

Anaël BELLE, Technical Artist at Catartsys Entertainment 

Interview conducted by Arti Burton