Check Out These Smoke FX and Learn How They Were Created in Houdini

3D Artist Wynn showcased this fantastic Houdini smoke effect and shared a breakdown describing the workflow with the nodes.

The artist explained that they made the visualization using spheres and added a mountain node for the spiky look. Then, they clipped the bottom part, scattered points with a bit of animated point jitter, and added attribute noise/randomize nodes along with some wrangle, and then used a copy-to-points node with sphere. The next step was to add two more wrangle nodes and another keyframed transform node to make the explosion look like it appeared out of nowhere. The final step involved adding another mountain node to make the spheres look more unique and more rough.

For the trail, the creator used a pyro trail path node and animated the carve node on the second U, and then repeated the workflow for the main explosion, except it's only a mountain node under the copy-to-points. The shader was created using a VEX-based Material Builder and rendered with Mantra.

Wynn also generously shared the project file.

The artists who use Houdini never stop to impress with their fascinating, otherworldly VFX. Check out these amazing works:

Procedural Nebula by 3D Designer and VFX Artist Adam Swaab:

Waterfall by FX Artist Berk Erdag:

Realistic river by 3D Artist Yuki Ito:

Wristwatch that looks like a Möbius strip by 3D Artist and Technical Director Matt Taylor:

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