Tech Art is Magic...that's why it's called Houdini
Added 2025-06-05 14:00:13 +0000 UTCA walkthrough by Randi Reynolds, Technical Artist, all about cliffs.
cliffExtension_walkthrough.mp4
Plus, some early planning notes on how we'd approach using a tool like Houdini in Hyper Light Breaker following the launch of Solar Ash.
Houdini Possibilities
Currently use this tool for procedural mesh generation in Solar Ash
Terrain
Could continue to iterate on this for Breaker to allow us to create large environments
The way it works
We are able to set a spline down in-editor (UE4) with our Houdini plug-in
Once this spline is finished, a mesh is generated based on the spline coordinates
The mesh itself has a variety of values that can be adjusted, including height, shatter and material + shading
Height is a vertical (z axis) projection from the mesh, which can be further modified to make the mesh more tubular or more narrow on the terminating end
Shatter determines the type of and amount of surface detail on the sides of the mesh - this nets a variety of different appearances for rock/dirt/spongey soil types or even architecture
Material + Shading can include the material on top of the "island" mesh and the type of gradient that will help it blend into the environment
Buildings - YouTube videos the team referenced:
Hope this helps you in your game dev journey!!
Let us know in comments what other kind of learning content you're interested in :D
