Motion Graphics with Houdini

Houdini Particle Solver for Motion Graphics

Houdini is infamous for creating physical simulations, ranging from water, fire, rigid body destruction, soft body materials, and particles. Have you tried using Houdini to create motion graphic videos? The prelude you see at the beginning of movies, video clips, and banner logos.

Disintegration

Boolean Subtract to create the Disappearing Act in the Disintegration Effect in Houdini

Disintegration simulation in Houdini is a pretty handy effect for motion graphics. Disintegration is very popular and is used in many introductory scenes for blockbuster titles you see in movies.

The disintegration effect you see in the animation on the top right is the result of using the POP solver in Houdini to generate a particle simulation effect that is driven by a velocity field. The velocity field is created by an additional pyro simulation that is driven by some handy VOP’s and randomizing noise. But all that only drives the particles’ motion. We then need to handle the disappearing act of the “Bubblepins” text, which is accomplished using the fast performing boolean node in Houdini.

I really like this effect because it uses multiple types of aspects of Houdini and combines them all together down the pipe to get an eye catching result.

Houdini RBD Solver for Motion Graphics

RBD moving Naturally

RBD SIM in Houdini rendered using Flipbook

I used the similar concept describe in the above Disintegration section and used it towards RBD pieces. I took the “Bubblepins” text and fractured it into pieces and fed it into a RBD Solver. I then used an additional pyro simulation to generate a velocity field to feed into the RBD solver as an external force to make the RBD pieces move more naturally. The fact that the RBD pieces collide as a given behavior of the RBD solver makes it very nice effect for introductory videos.

RBD Tornado made in Houdini driven by a Velocity Field

RBD Tornado

Using simulations in Houdini to create velocity fields or powering Houdini simulations using velocity fields is very common in Houdini and can also be used to create different special effects for films and movies. I used a slightly modified technique from the one described above to create a RBD Tornado in a Members-Only tutorial. Check out the post here!

If you feel interested, try joining the Bubblepins Membership to access even more Members Exclusive content!

FEM

FEM is super fun! No matter what type of geometry you’re using FEM on, it seems to make everything very interesting by squishing and squeezing things in and out. You sometimes get very unexpected results! Just take a look at the sponge effect I do with the car.