Disappearing & Growth Effect in Houdini

Growing Craig v2 FLIP..gif

In the previous blog post, I talked about creating motion graphics using Houdini. Things you see at the beginning of videos and fancy disintegrating text on the screen. This same technique can be used to make geometry disappear and grow.

 
Growing Craig CYCLES_1.gif

Particles Simulation

The whole technique relies on using particles to do the most of the magic and divert the viewer’s attention away from the geometry or cover the growing geometry. The growing geometry effect uses a simple boolean subtract to make the mesh appear and disappear, by moving the subtracting geometry while feeding the new positions to the boolean node. It’s like uncovering someone under the curtains.

Growing Effect using the Boolean node in Houdini

Growing Effect using the Boolean node in Houdini

As you see on the right, without the particles, the effect seems less impressive and less magical. I do think this effect could still use more work to make it more magical. I could use different shapes of geometry to subtract the mesh and place the subtracting geometry at different positions. And maybe even multiple geometries placed at different positions of the mesh with different animated motion paths. These are all ideas that came up during brainstorming and still work in progress, but I think I have the basic concept in place that can be used as a foundation for now.

 

Work in Progress…

I’m hoping to build upon this technique and create different ways of making things disappear and grow. The general workflow usually involves a boolean node to make geometry disappear.

As you can see on the right, I started out with some very simple test scenes and slowly improve the scenes until it looks more pleasant.

 
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