Setting Up a Procedural Concrete Damage Tool in Houdini

Concrete Damage Tool Overview

Hi! My name is Igor and currently, I am working as a Level Artist at Sperasoft, a Keywords Studio. I also worked as a С# Programmer and Tech Artist in the past. Now I am focused on environment art, but I also like to experiment with new software and features. One of my favorite instruments lately has been Houdini.

The basic idea behind this tool is quite simple. I wanted to speed up work on destroyed concrete and stone surfaces. If you do 1-2 scrapes on an object, it will be faster to do it in your favorite 3D software than to export it into Houdini. But when it comes to complex destructions, to which you also have to assign Edge Decals, my tool will come really handy.

Main Settings

In this section, I will go into more detail about some of the settings that can be used in my tool. First, you can save damaged parts. If an artist needs to keep the broken parts from the main mesh, they can easily do this and later use it at their own discretion. For example, scatter it next to the main object or even export it to the engine, and adjust the destructibility of the object.

If you want to learn more about Edge Decals workflow, I recommend you to watch this tutorial from FlippedNormals. 

You can also create curve-based or volume-based damage. My tool allows the artist to choose from 2 options on how they want to apply damage. To apply curve-based damage, you need to create a Draw Curve node and connect it to my tool. Draw Curve is a standard Houdini node that allows you to choose which projection your curve will work on, giving you more flexibility in using it with my tool. 

To apply volume-based damage, you need to connect any mesh you want to my tool. After that, damage will be automatically applied based on the mesh you connected to the tool. Like with curve-based damage, you can adjust the frequency, amplitude, mesh density, and other parameters for the destroyed part of the mesh. 

Conclusion

I have a lot of fun working with Houdini. I will continue to study this software and share my results with you. But I think it's important to note that a procedural approach rarely produces a perfect result. It's important to refine your work by hand in order to bring the work to perfection. But the fact that Houdini allows you to speed up work is excellent and beyond doubt.

Thanks to the 80 Level and all readers who took the time to read this article. Don't be afraid to try new approaches in your artworks, and good luck to everyone in your endeavors. 

Igor Tikhomirov, Level Artist