NEXTGEN MMO & HOUDINI
A new MMO we were building from the ground up using cutting-edge technology like Unity(HDRP)/UE5 and Houdini's powerful node system. I worked closely with a tech engineer to develop a fully procedural, non-destructive pipeline that integrated Houdini with UE5 or Unity HDRP (we were testing both engines and had not made a final choice) for the world terrain.
This pipeline leveraged Houdini's node-based system to feed height maps, asset points, and textures into a game engine's terrain system via the Houdini Engine. It enabled seamless asset scattering and combined with our other tools, still gave me the flexibility to manually refine terrains for custom points of interest (POIs) in a non-destructive way. This workflow significantly streamlined world-building, accelerating scene production by 75%. We were incredibly proud of the results.
The images below showcase our prototype scene in Unity (HDRP), where all of these techniques and tools were working in unison together. Below these images are some links with videos show casing some of the awesome tools created by Thom Galdi, the tech engineer I worked so closely with while creating this pipeline together.
Here are some links to videos that Thom Galdi put together, to show off some of the different tools he made for our pipeline. Thom provided exactly what I needed for the art side, delivering 100% on all requirements and requests. This allowed me to fine-tune everything seamlessly, both within Houdini’s node system and directly in the Unity/UE5 engine scenes.