Mario Sánchez Aguado shared his mesmerizing water simulation scene of a wooden cabin by the ocean. As an advanced scuba diver, the artist is no stranger to water scenes, and he often creates water simulations, which, as he confessed on his socials, cured his fear of the real ocean.

Aguado began working on this scene a year ago. Back then, he used Maya and Arnold to shape the environment, but the modeling process was too frustrating, and the artist abandoned the project. However, he decided to revive the scene and apply new workflows to the project after spending some time learning USD and mastering Houdini Solaris. 

Solaris combines tools for look development, layout, and lighting, allowing you to create USD-based scene graphs.

"When I came back to it, I went all in on Solaris and Karma XPU. I got the cabin and the fisherman from Big Medium Small, reused rocks, corals, and fish from The Sea's Heart, and focused on what I enjoy the most: lighting, lookdev, FX, and comp," Aguado shared.

Although it was his solo project, to organize the working process more efficiently, the artist approached it as a studio would. He divided the scene into different parts as if those were production steps carried out by different departments. 

"The water was where I had to make the biggest call. My plan was to approach it like a big production, with low-frequency waves for the overall shape and high-frequency detail on top as a separate displacement. But for this shot, that meant very dense geometry and much longer renders. A single plane with the Houdini Ocean Procedural gave me everything I needed," he explained.

For the lookdev, the artist used the power of transmission to the fullest, which helped him control the depth of the ocean. To create the nighttime version of the environment, he scattered lights over the corals and fish to simulate ethereal turquoise bioluminescence. Both versions were completed in Nuke with camera shake, lens effects, and caustic bounces. 

Want to see more of Aguado's work? Check it out on LinkedIn.

Love watching hypnotizing Houdini water simulations like this one? Here are some more: check out this fluid simulation based on Wētā's research on Lagrangian Waves by Fred Bello and this glowing water simulation by Yuki Ito. 

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