Integrating a Road into a Heightfield - Houdini Tutorial

00:00 Introduction
00:20 Base Setup
02:06 Blurring the Height
04:48 Integrating the Road
09:07 Final touches
File and Code: procegen.konstantinmagnus.de/...

[@pragmaticvfx]

This is awesome Konstantin!

[@vano2vano]

Amazing as always

[@RMAFIRE]

Incredible !! 😎✌

[@desocrate]

Great content, love it - how would you take this further and include the cuts, fills and maximum and minimum slope angles for the roads?

[@rogersk1599]

Amaizing, please could we get a tutorial on projecting houses(building volumes) on a slope?

[@tronotrond]

Thank you! A very clear and to the point tutorial. Keep it up!

[@OnkAnCa64]

Great, thanks

[@brukusbrukus]

Hi, Konstantin. Thanks for the great job, very useful!! I´m trying to modulate the min and max width with a ramp (based on the curveu attr from the curve), with no results. Any hints? Thanks!!

[@RaytraceRat]

Great tutorial. It does work, althought I can't fully say I know why it works :D

[@laihinchun]

Thanks for the tutorial, it's very useful ! I wonder is it possible to conform the other way, for example I have a road that is close to the shape of the landscape, and I want the landscape to conform to the closest points of the road?

[@KonstantinMagnus]

Hi Toni, yes sure, you can use functions such as xyzdist(), primuv() and smooth() in volume wrangles, as well.

[@liakim1572]

Hello, great video! Is there a way to extract the curve that shaped the "road"? I blasted the masked points (to only extract the road) to then try to get a curve... it works, but not that well and I wonder if there is somehow, maybe via wrangle to extract the curve that shapes the road (basically 'end1' node but with the correct P.y).

[@KonstantinMagnus]

Hi Lia, you could add an attribute wrangle with v@P.y = f@height; either before or after the attribblur1-node.

[@JohnDowson100]

Solid gold man. 2 Questions for you. 1: would it be possible to add a subtle noise in the smooth function to the road width? So to have a path that looks slightly more organic. Question 2: would it be possible to detect when the road is going through a mountain too steep and place a tunnel or deflect the road?

[@KonstantinMagnus]

Thank you! Q1: You could globally add noise to the max value before the smooth function: width_max += noise(v@P * 0.1) * 40; or transfer and add some attribute you have prepared on your curves: float deform_crv = primuv(1, 'deform', prim, uvw); Q2: You could increase the heightfield a few meters to make room for a tunnel when exceeding a certain slope. Tunnels themselves are not possible on a 2D heightfield. Also all this more advanced things such as tunnels, bridges, crossings need lots of thought and preparation steps and possibly would not be done right in a single volume wrangle.

[@JohnDowson100]

@@KonstantinMagnus oh yes of course. I meant faking just the entrance of a tunnel :)

[@user-oj7gr4ou4b]

Hi Konstantin! Do you know is it possible to reverse the process - in case I've created an interesting road spline and wanna fit a heightfield to it?

[@KonstantinMagnus]

Hi user..., making a height field flow through points or curves is possible with multivariate interpolation: procegen.konstantinmagnus.de/multivariate-interpolation My Houdini friend @adrianpan9211 contributed a suitable python/numpy script writing directly into the heightfield.

[@user-oj7gr4ou4b]

@@KonstantinMagnus Thank you for the answer! 🙏 It seems that it's what I need