Bamboo Forest

Tall Torii gate surrounded by bamboo forest and rustic foot path. Build procedurally using rules in Houdini and rendered with Arnold.
Night view of tall Torii gate surrounded by bamboo forest and rustic foot path. Build procedurally using rules in Houdini and rendered with Arnold.
Bamboo forest and rustic foot path surrounding koi pond with manicured island in the middle. A Japanese Maple tree stands in the center, lit by soft evening light. Highlights adaptability of Houdini scene. Rendered with Arnold.
Bamboo forest and rustic foot path surrounding koi pond with manicured island in the middle. A Japanese Maple tree stands in the center, lit by soft moon light and fireflies. Highlights adaptability of Houdini scene. Rendered with Arnold.
Procedural bamboo plants, artistic render.

A culmination of many projects, the Bamboo Forrest is part of a larger series of images I have been creating. While the asset creation like plants, gate, and lanterns was fun, this page will focus on the technical challenges the project brought. Such as two new tools, Slope Accumulation Scatter and Terrain Based Path Generation.

Slope Accumulation Scatter

Houdini mask based scatter. Uses existing tools and doesn't work as well as my custom implementation of slope based scattering. Houdini custom slope based scatter. A more realistic and natural scatter method that is as fast and far more controllable than the built in alternatives.

Traditional scatters require layering noises and masks to create a believable consistency of asset spread. I don't love this look for falling objects, such as leaves. A slope-based mask culls the points, but this does not mimic reality. Instead, leaves tend to gather at the base of steep surfaces.

Inititally this result was generated via vex solver. The solver was slow to calculate and required a preroll after the terrain changed. I optimized and wrapped everything into a single vex node, the scatter now takes roughly 1 second to generate a directable result.

Terrain Based Path Generation

An early render of torii gate in bamboo forest, highlights adaptability of Houdini network for generating new layouts.

The process of creating the paths in this scene was an exciting challenge. The tool needed to procedurally adjust to the underlying terrain. Walls needed to be built based on the height of the surface on either side of the path. Brick paths needed to become evenly-spaced stairs, based on the steepness of the terrain. Resolution near paths needed to be adjusted to allow for more defined shader displacements.

Houdini path tool, modulates based on terrain surface. Low slope does not generate stairs.
Houdini path tool, modulates based on terrain surface. High slope causes walls and stairs to generate.

Once finished and the procedural shaders were created, I laid out the final shots and updated the terrain. The final tool is, I admit, incredibly slow. But only needs to be calculated once the layout has been locked. Preview geo that ran in real time was used to get a feel for the final composition.

These images utilize custom tools, each has its own page

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