The Gnomon Workshop – Creating Procedural Environments in Houdini

Environment Artist Wojtek Piwowarczyk teaches how to create a 3D environment entirely using Houdini, the industry-standard animation tool by SideFX. The workshop reveals the complete process of procedural environment creation as well as the advantages of harnessing a non-destructive workflow, which allows you to make scene changes at any stage of the production process.

The 10-chapter lecture provides a complete methodology and workflow for creating environments for VFX film trailers and game cinematics. Each step of the environment production pipeline is covered through eight hours of in-depth Houdini training, teaching how to expertly structure a project from the initial block-out and lighting setup, through professional terrain-generation techniques and how to scatter vegetation, to the procedural modeling of architecture and setting up complex shaders. What’s more, Wojtek’s thought processes — from solving technical problems to high-level art direction — give additional skillful insights into how a professional artist tackles a project in the fast-paced film, TV, and game cinematic industry.

As well as learning the art of utilizing Houdini’s full power to create complex ecosystems, the workshop also includes lessons on optimizing and speeding up workflow by building procedural tools and harnessing the power of VEX, Houdini’s native programming language.