Procedural This, Procedural That | Nikola Damjanov | Paris HIVE 2023

Nikola Damjanov, who has been with Nordius, a mobile gaming company in Belgrade, Serbia, for 11 years, talks about how he has delved into procedural work as a means to enhance efficiency and avoid repetitive design and texturing tasks. He initially utilized Substance Designer and later transitioned to Houdini for procedural tasks in game development, enabling him to create environments and effects. Additionally, Nikola developed systems that facilitated rapid feedback and iteration from game designers. Alongside his professional endeavors, he engaged in personal projects involving the generation of texture variations, stylized rendering, and procedural animations employing mathematical functions and layered noises.

[@MichaelHalsell]

Nikola's work and approach is very inspiring. His observations are very nuanced and disciplined. He has great enthusiasm as well.

[@lematt16]

very inspiring! The passion there is through the roof and it motivates me to create arts. So thanks for that.

[@rostyslavshmatkov8112]

Will wait for public materials and more tutorials from this great artist! Thx for video!

[@damjanmx]

Thx, more will come soon ;)

[@johannesisphording7919]

One of the most inspirint Houdini Presentations I have seen in a long time!

[@damjanmx]

wow, thanks ;)

[@tronotrond]

What an truly awesome presentation! A lot of really smart ways to think outside the box, and create complex models from such simple inputs. The experimentation and taking your concepts into real life art and models was really inspiring!

[@damjanmx]

Much appreciated 🙏 Inspiring others to try something new is a great feeling 😊

[@nononsense2688]

The rocket robot animation was one of the coolest things ive seen in a while in houdini.

[@damjanmx]

Haha, thx :) it's funny how far you can go with a couple of trigonometry functions and some linking. 😅

[@nononsense2688]

@@damjanmx lol i struggled with Sin and Cos all my life until implementing it into vex and it all made sense fairly quick after that. makes me wish i took up houdini when i was 14ish, but it was also a much more complicated interface back than haha

[@damjanmx]

​@nononsense2688 yes and yes :) Sometimes, just visualizing complex things or going through them step by step is the best way of understanding them. And I also wish I found out about Houdini many years ago 😅

[@Mie1P]

Your way of managing work time and leisure time is really cool, Learn a lot thx

[@damjanmx]

Thanks. That was actually one of the hardest things for me to learn. Ironically, it just took a lot of time to find a ballance that works for me.

[@TabascoDev]

@@damjanmx Hi Nikola. The neon sign generator is very interesting. Is it possible to buy the sample Houdini project?

[@damjanmx]

@@TabascoDev Hi...it's not quite ready to be shared, HIP file is still a heavy WIP. I'll release it soon but I just need to find time to optimize it.

[@TabascoDev]

@@damjanmx Sure. Thanks so much for the quick reply and your sharing. 😀

[@amerboss99]

at which time does he start talking about it?

[@sevfx]

05:06 "this... prehistoric tool" xD

[@damjanmx]

had to poke :D

[@Ali-pi6mn]

Great Works, Loved all of them. Are the Nodevenmber Files released yer or not

[@damjanmx]

Thx! Not yet....soon :)

[@Renat.K]

Thanks, Nicola!

[@damjanmx]

You're welcome 😊

[@DommageCollateral]

37:11 how did he do this? shortest path search with collision interaction, or nnk search to other curves? but its also a weird kind of growth if didnt fake it with sweep

[@damjanmx]

It's similar to this - segment a line, randomly extrude (grow) segments for a while (10-30) frames, then segment and extrude again. Of course, with collision detection. I didn't invent it tbh

[@DommageCollateral]

@@damjanmx ​ ah ok i guess this is differential line growth (or maybe diffusion curve growth?).i just saw a video that showed all 8 forms of procedural growth in 3d space, but i cant find it anymore. i wish there was a tutorial about how they are achieved in houdiny.. so i guess people mostly use differential growth and then combine it with signed distance growth(or fields), or they use sdf growth (vdb advect) in the first place in houdiny. thanks for your reply. you should def. give (more) tutorials!!! love your work

[@DommageCollateral]

@@damjanmx im also interested in your experimental stuff

[@damjanmx]

@DommageCollateral I want to do more tutorials, but that damn thing called time! :)

[@DommageCollateral]

@@damjanmx time is my worst enemy (in addition to sleep of course)! xD