Leveraging Houdini and Substance tool for the SideFX short movie “The Dawning”
Nikola Damjanov
Nordeus
- Hall:
- Yellow Sea Hall (Mix Track)
During this session, we will break down the techniques used to create the Martian landscape shown in the short film "The Dawning". We will analyze several approaches to heightfield modeling and texturing at scale, from close-ups of cracked ground and layered rocks to large-scale landscapes.
What the talk is about
Nikola Damjanov breaks down how the Mars terrains for SideFX's short film The Dawning were built in Houdini using height fields and textured in Substance Painter. Shots ranged from wide vistas to almost micro-level views of an astronaut's feet, so the approach shifted slightly with each scale. Distant backgrounds started from real-world scan data and were refined with erosion, distortion, terracing and scattered rocks. For mid-range cliffs, part of a height field was extracted as a mesh and turned into layered rock strata. The cracked ground under the astronaut was built from Voronoi cells plus extra detail layers. Texturing relied on smart materials and UDIM tiles. The procedural setup let the team iterate fast whenever camera angles changed. Useful for 3D environment and technical artists working with terrain.