Tutorial: How to Create PRO QUALITY Scene with Blender & Houdini

100 million sand particles were simulated for this cinematic scene. This teaches you how you can import and export simulation between Blender and Houdini and many more small tricks in Blender. You can use this workflow between Blender and Houdini to anything you can think of.
Project file:
drive.google.com/file/d/1HoEv...
Shakify Add-on:
github.com/EatTheFuture/camer...
0:00 Intro
1:41 Setting Up the Collider
4:18 Houdini Introduction
5:02 Setting Up the Sand Simulation
15:27 Exporting and Importing Simulation Between Blender and Houdini
18:10 How to Turn HDRi to Environment Dome
29:31 Setting Up the Sand Simulation in Blender
39:05 Baking the High-Res Simulation in Houdini
41:35 Final Tweaks
53:34 Outro
For the stalkers:
Instagram: / viitanentomi
Artstation: www.artstation.com/tomiviitanen
LinkedIn: / tomi-viitanen-15999b150
PC Specs:
CPU: i9 13900k
GPU: RTX 4090
RAM: 64GB DDR5
#blender #blendertutorial #houdini

[@KabeeshS]

Rendering time : Universe

[@tomiviitanen]

Haha, it wasn't actually that bad. Frames took 3-5mins to render with my CPU. Unfortunately the scene just exceeded mine GPU VRAM for 1-2GB and thats why I had to use CPU.

[@KabeeshS]

@@tomiviitanen Its pretty cool ♥

[@QwecySlim]

​@@tomiviitanenwhat cpu are you using?

[@tomiviitanen]

@@QwecySlim Intels 13900k

[@QwecySlim]

@@tomiviitanen Oh ok great

[@arcangeel4828]

This blender/Houdini video is fire! So happy to have just discovered this awesome artist 😄

[@dude3d]

I really love this video my friend. This is so great. I’m eagerly waiting to watch more from you. Please make that post processing workflow video. Thank you so much for the amazing work 🫡❤️

[@mistery3dify]

You're an amazing person and teacher, thanks for sharing your knowledge.

[@zepnr4741]

Absolutely astonishing 🎉

[@JeanYanb]

Bro it's a masterpiece. I stopped learning Houdini, but now I'll try again thanks to you brother.

[@renderengine6573]

Hello ! jean Yan ! I love your Work too and this Video was Amazing too. Plz Make tutorials For Houdini too , and to use Blender and other Softwares for Realistic Animations and Little efforts plz.

[@phamtheanh9101]

wow i found golden quality video here. Thank you so much!

[@NaqashAfzal]

Its absolutely amazing ❤

[@mohsinali965]

Thanks a lot bro ❤ this is what I'm searching for

[@ElijahHamilton]

This is insane!!! It's nice to see more people making tutorials :)

[@utsavsinhzala]

Awesome scene. Please make more tutorials on blender and Houdini.

[@mehyarzarathoustra3604]

more houdini / blender workflow plz, thanks for this tutorial

[@Thies_Gruenewald]

Great Content! A lot of work went into this! Good luck for the channel! :)

[@samisiukola2772]

Hyvä tutoriaali, kiitos tästä!

[@tomiviitanen]

Hienoa jos jaksoit katsoa!

[@skipatreep]

Bro, this is amazing! After studying the blender, I will teach Houdini. I couldn't figure out for a long time where to do such simulations, thank you very much for the video, I wish you further productive development, if this is not the ceiling, of course)

[@Xanofeq]

amazing tutorial hope you do more tutorial in the future

[@camelbyte626]

This is amazing !

[@matthewaina4234]

This is awesome!

[@bram_gunst]

Amazing tutorial! I just discoverd your channel and it is a goldmine thank you so much!!! Keep it up!

[@danisulat6762]

I HAVE BEEN LOOKING FOR THIS EXACT SHIT FOR A YEAR NOW. THANK YOUUU

[@Sigmalife5]

O Really you're Great animation... Amazing please next video... ❤❤Thank you so much making video..

[@filmweaver2013]

My gooddd! Thatt iss amazingggg!! Wowww!

[@AlexisRivera3D]

Insane work! please make more content about Houdini + Blender

[@user-cz9bm3jz4s]

this is absolutely amazing you have so many tricks in blender i never knew they exist Thank you 🖤🖤

[@RanjithKizhakkey]

this is gold

[@josecasimiro2811]

Damn!!! You are incredible as a 3D Generalist/VFX artist! Please do more of this VFX using all Blender + Houdini + AE/Nuke. You're got yourself a new subscriber.!

[@tomiviitanen]

Thanks man! People seems to like this so I will definitely continue to share the knowledge of cool 3D-stuff here. Thank you for the sub:)

[@beaustine6093]

Amazing! Please do more Blender/Houdini tutorials.

[@user-dp1lx4in2w]

Wow amazing

[@Juzzi9]

I doubted myself seeing Finnish flag on the preview. Then I noticed your name. Cool to have Blender pro from Finland! Gotta delve deeper into your stuff

[@MrCasabotella]

Wow good job

[@dreamartzpr]

Thank youu !!

[@djibessvideos]

you're the goat

[@Tweedledee__]

Never felt this entertained while watching a tutorial. Mad props dude! Subscribed and activated notification :)

[@seikodelic439]

best man ever

[@HUNTERRRR]

Your tutorial is industry standard, and I thank you so much for it. It seems like I should be paying for quality. I appreciate you sharing this, Tomi! Keep up the great work!

[@tomiviitanen]

Thanks man! I appreciate it.

[@TheRealMonstaa]

Absolutely fantastic tutorial. Thank you for this! I would be very interested in seeing the AE tutorial as well :D

[@MaitrayaRai]

Awesome :) :)

[@KKsinsa]

Your brilliant ideas truly shone throughout the course. I enjoyed it greatly. Also, you seem to have a sharp mind. However, I observed that you put a lot of effort into using the unstable blender. I believe you could have resolved the issue and achieved higher quality simply by using Houdini.

[@ramanrafiq7888]

I am guessing this took no less than 10 days to create, this is absolutely beautiful and awesome!!

[@user-ti8we7iw5k]

You're hired.

[@Joyzful]

Great tutorial! Thanks for sharing

[@rsunghun]

amazing stuff! even though I'm not going to go near to the Houdini XD

[@TruthSurge]

pretty amazing but my brain says that the pulling being done by the arms is not 100% causing the body to move forward. The body is moving forward too much in spots almost as if it's being pulled forward but not by the arms alone. but that's just what my brain sees. The particles of sand were pretty amazing. that one towards the camera was really good. very nice!

[@Yeove]

Bro thank you so much for this tutorial, I watched the whole thing twice. There's so many little things I had no idea were possible. 22:08 Like the backface culling on a sky dome to be able to see through it. 42:03 And tracking an empty on an actor's face to automatically keep it in focus.

[@tomiviitanen]

Glad you learned something new!

[@KensyFTW]

Thank you ! This is insane ! Wonder if you could do Hodini x Maya tuto next time ? Really appreciate your work !

[@tomiviitanen]

Thanks, glad you liked it. I haven't touched Maya since 2018, so unfortunately I have no idea how to do stuff in Maya anymore.

[@FinalComp]

Very nice, I just subscribed to your content after this video. There should be more tutorials and videos about the workflow between blender and houdini. Houdini is a life saver related to simulations. Thank you!

[@liikala_]

Mielenkiintoista 😇💪💪

[@supriyo3610]

Woow😮

[@clausbohm9807]

Thank you for making the wizardry less wizard like ...

[@oscarcutmore]

Could do make a Houdini water sim tut? It’s hard to find them for beginners? Thanks

[@ryuanim3494]

my computer will cry after watched your video XD

[@Scouty]

Awesome stuff! Dang though .003 is so small, I also have a 4090 and I hit a openCL crash anytime I go under .004, maybe a binning thing? Or did you possibly have a smaller sim size than whats in the default project?

[@tomiviitanen]

Damn, I can't remember if I used the exact same size simulation than the default is in the project file. It was really close to that size anyway. Could it be so that the other pc specs plays some role in that process too? I dunno. Yeah and .003 was really on the edge with the hardware in my case so hard to say. Maybe you have some other programs open at the same time to eat resources?

[@jquintero462]

Amazing tutorial! I was wondering what type of pen table and desktop 🖥️ setting do you have? Thank you. 😊

[@tomiviitanen]

Ty! I use Wacom Cintiq 27" QHD as a main monitor plus I have 3 standard monitors surrounding it.

[@purpleparkstudios4124]

Post process would be cool to see in AE. The quality of the shot you made is really awesome. More people need to be doing this type of stuff with Blender. I subscribed and am looking forward to more videos from you!

[@dantodd2196]

Second that!

[@toopzie261]

when trying to get the high render sand simulation i get the error 'could not open alembic archive for reading, see console for details, do you know how to fix

[@MohdAsif-dc9ic]

Dop sop lop top pop mop ballalalaalah burrrh As a blender user, houdini is going above my head 😂😂

[@purpleparkstudios4124]

Great video! For the Eevee users if you import images as planes and want shadows and reflections make sure the image as planes is set to Alpha Hashed and Alpha Hashed before you import or you can change it in the material properties. Obviously enable screen space reflections and ambient occlusion.

[@2kstyles]

Dude, what SFX pack did you use for the robot noises?

[@tomiviitanen]

I used couple free 'Robot voices' on Soundly

[@fazorgameryt8970]

Love the video, I've been looking for a tutorial like this in forever, keep it up man :) Tyy

[@islambelal7248]

Amazing, can I do it with unreal engine 5 ?

[@ChilligerHund]

Why are you not using the HDRI the "normal" way over the Shader Editor > World ? For more realistic reflections and lighting ?

[@GhostUEP]

Do you think is it possible to get good results using JangaFX real time simulations?

[@tomiviitanen]

I've only used Embergen from them, and it's my first pick for making fire/smoke/dust. I haven't checked lately, so do they have some software to simulate particles also now?

[@GhostUEP]

@@tomiviitanen Idk it launched already but yeah, LiquidGen is comming and Ive seen some amazing results, and the software has particles simulations too

[@AstroTrain100]

Just curious can you do it using just Houdini or Blender? or do you need to learn both? Which would you recommend learning first?

[@tomiviitanen]

You can do all this in Houdini for sure. It's just not the easiest software to learn. Blender is lacking top notch quality simulations but other than that it's a great software to learn 3D fundamentals. I would say Blender is all you need at least for the first year or two of your 3D journey.

[@AstroTrain100]

@@tomiviitanen Thanks!

[@relexelumna5360]

Comparing Rtx 4070 vs Rx 7800 xt which one is better for rendering and content creation?

[@jameejamshid9921]

WHy did you prefer blender has render engine ? can you also do houdini render (mantra or karma)

[@tomiviitanen]

I'm so familiar with Blender, and also consider myself as a beginner with Houdini, so it would of just took way too much time to me learn making materials, environment, render settings and basically everything else besides the simulation to build this scene inside Houdini.

[@WatchWorthyClips-yx6og]

i am unable to save to disk when exporting it says" Error Alembic export is only supported in Houdini Core and Houdini FX versions" what do i do?

[@tomiviitanen]

You need licensed version of Houdini. Unfortunately you can't export alembic with apprentice version.

[@theshadow6273]

Hey pretty sweet tutorial. Any chance you can show us how to import a blender scene: objects, cameras, lights, materials, animations etc into houdini and render it all with karma xpu?

[@AlexisRivera3D]

I think you can export the whole scene using USD but not sure, I don't use Houdini

[@tomiviitanen]

Yeah, like Alexis said USD might work, but I'm not experienced with that. If not, then there's probably no way to do that. Alembic would probably work also excluding materials and lights.

[@theshadow6273]

@@tomiviitanen thanks for the response! Ill try and see if I can figure it out on my own! USD seems like the way to go honestly since thats the language karma uses. I'll look around and see what I can find

[@youtubeadmin1357]

What is the name of the second program?

[@TheAndrizone]

Please, do the post process in AE, it could be helpfull!!

[@barscakr3104]

whait is your monitor with toucscreen model?

[@tomiviitanen]

Wacom Cintiq 27 QHD Touch

[@user-tc4hc2nf4r]

This image seems to have been completed with CG or computer technology, but I feel desperately that South Korea really needs a robot army to have in the situation between South and North Korea.I hope that these military robots will play a role in Korea's Robot Defense Agency

[@mustafadede571]

Damn

[@hintme1385]

i am not capable to expoet alembic rop export beacaue of aprentics verstion of houdini please help

[@tomiviitanen]

Yes, unfortunately thats one of the limitations of apprentice version. You'll just have to get licensed version of Houdini.

[@maccapele1]

Please what’s your system setup speciation?

[@tomiviitanen]

Check the description

[@TheJautja]

Whatever the quality of the render, you made metal that bends. It's all here.

[@huntressartemis9575]

i just want to ask, waht are the specs of the pc you used to make this ?

[@tomiviitanen]

Check the description :)

[@huntressartemis9575]

@@tomiviitanen my bad sir

[@stubbyrenders-zg7sb]

Amazing tutorial, going to give it a go myself shortly. Just a quick question, when you did the gradient on the dome between diffuse and emission wouldn't that have negated the need for the second material for the dome? i.e. you could have the entire ground plane diffuse and a gradient into emission? or does it need to be a separate material?

[@tomiviitanen]

You're right. There's no need to duplicate the material unless you wanna translate either of those individually. And even then you could do it inside one material but maybe it's more simple with separate materials.

[@stubbyrenders-zg7sb]

@@tomiviitanen Ah cool thanks yea, it makes sense if you want to adjust the image without chaning the overall, also I was wondering as I don't have access to Houdini is there any way you could upload the output file so anyone with only blender could follow the tutorial? Or is it massive? Anyway awesome vid!

[@endizero]

did it work with maya>?

[@ROYSMoGraphDesign9900k]

need motionblur on the object, looks more realistic Composite ! 🙂

[@BrunoPereira-tt8pi]

Can i use Unreal instead of Blender?

[@tomiviitanen]

I haven't used Unreal, but I assume you can import alembic there as well. Unfortunately I can't help you how to texture the simulation in UE, sry.

[@edwydennytwins]

Great Tutorial. My specs: Ryzen 7 5800 and RTX 3070 😂

[@eklavyatech8588]

How to set houdini GPU rendering

[@VisualistAyush07]

My pc only have 16 gb ram and no gpu can I still use Houdini?

[@tomiviitanen]

In theory you can but the amount of things you can do with it is really limited

[@VisualistAyush07]

@@tomiviitanen oh ok

[@Magical_studiosja]

100k sub by december

[@zekedabomb3343]

Did you use reference videos of sand to determine the simulation parameters?

[@tomiviitanen]

Actually did not, even though thats like the first rule of CGI. :) I just played with the settings before I got bored waiting every calculation. There is few things I would change now if I only would be interested baking the simulation another 30hrs again.

[@sanjaysolanki97721]

I should book flight to jupiter. This gonna take forever in my potato PC.

[@BlueprintsTo3D]

what was the render time ?

[@tomiviitanen]

3-5min / frame depending on the scene.

[@BlueprintsTo3D]

@@tomiviitanen not as bad as i was gussing

[@JvOeditorR]

someone's having trouble with the render too ? know how to fix it ?

[@JvOeditorR]

on my viewport it show a correct way but sometimes in render it gets messy, position and scale of my particles (idk how explain, it just goes wrong, but in just some frames, not all)

[@tomiviitanen]

I think this is a bug in Blender. I had to rerender some of the frames because of this as well. I think I had something around 7 frames out of 250 to render incorrectly. I think it has something to do with persistant data and motion blur. Usually it renders correctly on second try, if not then try to deactivate persistant data from performance settings and do the same for the motion blur.

[@AKASwayam]

Can anyone give me Houdini sand simulation file pls

[@tomiviitanen]

Link to the simulation file is in the description

[@indianfilmrockers9069]

how to create those sand particles tutorial please

[@tomiviitanen]

You mean the ones at the very beginning? It's just a photoscan which is hided from the render right when hand hits to the ground.

[@indianfilmrockers9069]

@@tomiviitanen I MEAN THAT TV SAND TUTORIAL WHICH YOU INCLUDED IN YOUR DISCRIPTION AS PROJECT FILE

[@keriatin5338]

This man is struggling with a 4090 and im trying to make an ocean in houdini with my i5 and 1050ti, great work though,also imttersting way of creating the enviroment

[@nicolasreia]

Can I only save this project with paid Houdini?

[@tomiviitanen]

I believe you can do all this with free Houdini Apprentice version except exporting the simulation out from Houdini.

[@nicolasreia]

@@tomiviitanen The problem is that the non-commercial version does not export the alambic project

[@tomiviitanen]

1:03 Yeah, I actually mentioned about that in here

[@VFxArk]

15:54 save to disk not working. Why ?

[@tomiviitanen]

Could be more precise? How and why it's not working?

[@VFxArk]

I think , it's not working on non commercial version

[@tomiviitanen]

@@VFxArk You're right. It's a limitation of the free version

[@rajnishsharma7899]

Redshift renderer

[@MirxVisuals]

Anyone got that licensed Houdini hook-up?? 👀

[@jasonj3952]

Why use Blender + Houdini? Can't this be done with just Houdini?

[@tomiviitanen]

Definitely could be done with just a Houdini, I just dont know how. :) I'm not really familiar with lighting, animating and rendering in Houdini.

[@fabianoperes2155]

AMAZING video, but sand is not THAT sticky!

[@goldstick3D]

I like how your video card isn't good enough. The best consumer card ever made is not good enough :D

[@tomiviitanen]

Hah, yeah. Although we've been stuck with 24GB VRAM the last 3 years already.

[@moushiwake-nice]

地球に隕石が落ちるCGの作り方を教えて下さい。 宜しくお願い致します。

[@o.w.l3433]

I want be like you😢😢