Solving Plants in Houdini | George Hulm | Houdini Horizon

Creating convincing, beautiful 3D plants requires both artistic skill and processes that mimic natural patterns. Traditional parametric tools offer modular controls but lack organic simulation, while generative systems can be difficult to direct. Our Houdini-based framework bridges this gap by combining intuitive, artist-friendly controls with botanical simulation capabilities. Artists can define complex simulations using rule-based logic, gradients, fields, and scripts, while manually shaping and pruning vegetation. Built on Houdini’s APEX architecture and OpenCL accelerated, our system integrates ray marching, VDBs, and PBD and more, to simulate biomechanics, thigmomorphogenesis, and other mechanics of plant growth, offering users unprecedented control, speed, and flexibility in creating naturalistic vegetation.
George Hulm co-developed the foliage toolkit with Feike Postmes, George most recently worked on the Technical Environment Art workflows on SideFX Software's Project Pegasus. For the last few years, he has worked in Technical R&D for synthetic datasets, VR digital twins, Digital Heritage, and TV broadcast, with a focus on developing foliage pipelines. In his last role at Applied Intuition, George developed an in-house foliage system which, over a year of production, was used to produce 300 assets.

[@peterallely5417]

So good, I just watched your Natural unreal fest talk, is this going to be a paid plugin or a part of Houdini?

[@UndiniTuts]

@peterallely5417 Natsura is an independent set of tools, and is not developed, sponsored or owned by Sidefx. Studios interested in trying the tools should reach out as we are currently nailing down licensing options, and offer free trials. A broader general release is slated for some time later in 2025, but individuals who are also looking to try the tools can get in touch and may be able to join early-testing!

[@KingdomCrafter]

I've only been waiting every day for the past week for this. Lets gooo!

[@FeikeDodoDevs]

Sharing your excitement!

[@MathiasJ89]

This looks exactly like what I hoped a full foliage system in Houdini to be. Will it have custom meshing tools too? Properly blended meshing between trunks/branches with UVs would be amazing. Does it handle point instancing of branches/leaves natively or is it possible to output the points for processing?

[@FeikeDodoDevs]

The focus is currently mainly on creating the branching structures and making sure those are healthy, but we have a number of exciting features coming up regarding meshing. outputting points for processing is always possible, directly outputting instances for usage in unreal is also an option!

[@carlosrivadulla8903]

this is going to be an amazing addition to the launch of H21

[@UndiniTuts]

Natsura is an independent set of tools, and is not developed, sponsored or owned by Sidefx. Studios interested in trying the tools should reach out as we are currently nailing down licensing options, and offer free trials. A broader general release is slated for some time later in 2025, but individuals who are also looking to try the tools can get in touch and may be able to join early-testing!

[@Wichenroder]

Excellent

[@吴知-l4y]

nice~~

[@freekhoekstra4763]

lmao, appreciate you picking that picture hahahaha

[@UndiniTuts]

Its a great picture! 😁

[@mrpig4286]

how to animate them?

[@CupMcCakers]

Its already possible to animate growth since the final structures are the result of a step-by-step simulation. The skeletons generated by the system are natively compatible with kinefx. As we move forwards we will also be pulling features outside of the solver such as the fk dynamics which drive simulation and pbd which drives collisions so users will be able to post-animate procedurally too for effects such as wind and destruction mechanics!

[@Grumbledookvid]

Nah I'll sculpt it all by hand, thanks anyway nerds

[@UndiniTuts]

😂

[@andr101]

Good luck sculpting a whole forest

[@Grumbledookvid]

@andr101 I'll sculpt all the bark without using tiling materials

[@peterallely5417]

Cool and place them all by hand