Polishing up the Grains Simulation

I wasn’t completely satisfied with the result I got from the last blog post, so I made some adjustments to the Vellum Grain simulation.

Grains Simulation starting to fall as they are activated in the simulation in Houdini

I slowed down the growing effect of the grains so it would take a little longer to activate all the grain particles.

@pscale

I overwrote the @pscale attribute for the grain particles, thus making all the particles smaller by default instead of relying on the Redshift Render Particle size. In my opinion this was a lot better to work with, because this way I’m able to see the actual rendering particle size in the viewport. But the main reason I overwrote the @pscale was to feed in smaller particles into the volume rasterize node and create a volume fog that would better match the particles.

However in the final version, I removed the volume, because it didn’t make much of a difference and this sped up my rendering so so much faster.

Large and small clusters of grains tied together by constraints in Houdini

Clustering

I also increased the number of clusters forming grain constraints so I would get more rock like shapes falling down in clusters. I liked the small pieces and larger pieces that fall down.