This Houdini-Based Digital Octopus Looks Impressively Alive

Have a look at this incredibly lifelike digital octopus simulation created by CG Generalist and VFX Artist Alex Zee, a.k.a. ghost3dee, in Houdini, a 3D procedural software for modeling, rigging, animation, VFX, look development, lighting, and rendering developed by SideFX.

As stated by the creator, the octopus was simulated using finite element method (FEM) wrinkles set up using Houdini's FEM solver, with the mesh consisting of three layers totaling 1.5 million tetrahedron primitives. The simulated cephalopod, Alex noted, took 22 hours to render on a 12-year-old Dual Xeon Workstation.

And here are some of Alex's earlier works, you can check out more by visiting the author's Twitter and Instagram pages:

If you want to learn more about FEM wrinkles, the best place to start would be Houdini's HybridWrinkle example file that shows how to generate wrinkles dynamically using the FEM solver.

It contains a generic setup, where an object that represents bones and muscles is connected to another object that represents fat and skin. The animation of the bones and muscles object makes the skin wrinkle indirectly. It also demonstrates the use of the FEM Solid Object, the FEM Hybrid Object, the FEM Fuse Constraint, and the distributed target constraints that are built into FEM Objects.

And here are some great tutorials on using Houdini's FEM solver:

Also, don't forget to join our 80 Level Talent platform and our Telegram channel, follow us on Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn, where we share breakdowns, the latest news, awesome artworks, and more.