EPC 2023

Generating Loot River

This talk will delve into techniques and approaches used for procedural generation in ‘Loot River’, including unsuccessful attempts and mistakes made during development. It should give a comprehensive view of macro and micro systems used in the game – from generating general layout to small variations in level decorations, reasoning behind design decisions in these systems, and the particular challenges of using procedural systems in a game with puzzle mechanics.

Miro Straka

Starka Studios

A Procedural Life in Effects

In this presentation Joel will talk about his venture in the procedural world of film effects. Having worked on a wide variety of Hollywood blockbuster movies, for which Joel created jaw-dropping effects, Joel developed a wide vocabulary and experience doing realistic as well as stylized effects that involve simulations and procedural techniques. Joel will run through a few of these iconic effects, mention production challenges and elaborate on techniques used to make them come to reality.

Joel Einhorn

Walt Disney Animation Studios

Houdini In Returnal

Returnal is built out of separate rooms and each time the player starts a cycle, the rooms are randomly connected. This required us to make a lot of varied rooms. So we decided to heavily automate the art content creation process. In this talk we will go through our Houdini pipeline and see how we built the worlds in Returnal.

Kimmo Ala-Ojala

Housemarque

Parametric Architecture

Zaha Hadid Architects is a world renowned architecture firm known for its innovative and futuristic designs using fluid, organic forms. The lecture will describe the way the firm uses procedural methods and parametric design to create complex and dynamic designs with greater flexibility and efficiency. Additionally, The lecture will showcase the work of the ZHVR Group, immersive technologies research group within ZHA, as well as research carried out in Academia, at the Architectural Association School of Architecture DRL (Design Research Lab) and UCL Bartlett BPro postgraduate programmes, in the topics of Metaverse and Mixed Reality technologies. 

José Pareja Gómez

Zaha Hadid Architects

From L-System to Humankind Game

Humankind depicts a world made of hexagons filled with millions of various small objects. I will show you how we where able to simultaneously feedback gameplay informations while producing a beautiful and very varied world. Our method resembles an exploration of a decision tree where the nodes only belong to a few categories. It has some similarity to L-System but goes beyond by adding sensitivity to values ​​collected from the environment. We will using actual samples of problem that we had to deal with, from simple to more complex situations.

Timothée Raulin

Amplitude Studios

The Elephant In The Writing Room

AI is becoming more mainstream – meaning there’s a whole new world of easy-to-use tools that writers can experiment with. In this talk, we’ll introduce you to experimentation with AI and showcase different explorations you can try to enhance your writing for games. A mix of hands-on participative experiments, background information, and tips on tools you can use right now to make writing a more exciting task.

Charlene Putney

COO, Write With LAIKA

Martin Pichlmair

CEO, Write With LAIKA

Creating Procedural City Set Extensions with Houdini

At Framestore we’ve created a number of in house tools inside Houdini to generate large scale city set extensions. We’ll be breaking down some of the challenges we faced when going from raw street map data all the way to final output, while keeping the setup fully procedural.

Robert Moore

Framestore

Procedural Content Generation Tools in UE5

A brand new feature for UE5.2, PCG is a graph-based procedural toolset that makes populating a game world a breeze. In this talk Arran Langmead, Senior Content Developer for Epic games will take you through the new PCG graph features and how to use them in your own project. This includes using the new graph, how to read input data like landscapes and splines, as well as an overview of the more in-depth areas of the tools.

Arran Langmead

Epic Games

Why the procedural approach could fail

When I wrote procedural tools for small projects and myself, I thought I was good at this. Then I started to write tools in the studio with more than 100 artists and I realized I’m making mistakes in very unexpected areas. This is the story about those failures and how tech artists can avoid them.

Yurii Lebediev

Frag Lab

This title wasn’t generated in ChatGPT

You might have heard about this not so recent thing called AI. The past months have been a whirlwind of releases, shitstorms and new means of creating artworks. In this two part talk, Paul Ambrosiussen and Moritz Moritz try making sense of it all by diving head first into the why and how to add this set of tools to your pipeline by duct taping it to our most beloved 3D App, Houdini. Expect a mix of theory, scripting, a good part design and occasional cursing.

Paul Ambrosiussen

Bismuth Consultancy

Moritz Schwind

Entagma

TRANSFORMATIONS

The key concept driving the level generation behind Unexplored and Unexplored 2 is model transformation. This concept taken from model driven engineering suggests that the generation process is broken down into multiple, self-contained steps. The output of each step is a ‘model’ of the level you want to generate. The first model might contain the general outline, while another model might represent basic physical space, while a third represents the structural relations between gameplay elements.

During this two-day workshop we’ll use Ludomotion’s in-house generation tool Ludoscope to explore the notion of model transformation. We will be breaking down the generation process in multiple steps, experimenting with different types of models and transformations, and trying out several generative / transformative grammar techniques to make it all work. For the workshop Ludoscope will be made available, but you can also bring your own generation tools and techniques.

Joris Dormans

Ludomotion

HOUDINI FUNDAMENTALS

This Masterclass consists of two sessions.

Houdini Fundamentals
LThis workshop will introduce artists to Houdini, and give them a sound understanding to continue their studies. We will make our first procedural model by building a solar system generator with a cool user interface. We will toon shade it so we can render it in no time. Next we will learn all about Houdini’s secret power: attributes. We will then take this knowledge and use Houdini’s CHOPs (channel operators) and RBD (rigid body) systems to procedurally animate some “Freaky Balls” dancing to the music of your choice! Finally we will light and render our scene, so you can export the movie to your social media platform of choice!

Attendees should have some familiarity with 3D software like Blender, Maya, 3D Studio Max, etc.

Sean Lewkiw

Cinesite VFX Montreal

DIY Plants for Games with Houdini
Learn how to take advantage of Houdini’s powerful procedural nature to put together your own node-based workflow for creating game-ready foliage. In this workshop, we will start by exploring the nodes most useful for constructing basic plant geometry. We will learn how easily we can leverage VEX to build powerful user interfaces, and finally, finish with a set of digital assets designed to expedite the construction of foliage assets ready to be dropped into real time scenes and worlds. This workshop is for aspiring Houdini users and foliage artists.

George Hulm

Freelance

HOUDINI TECHNICAL

This Masterclass consists of several sessions.

KineFX: Animating Environments and Props
Since KineFX was released, there have been plenty of great resources put out about using it for various character related workflows, like retargeting, procedural animation, ragdoll etc. In this workshop, we will not be talking about any of that. Instead, we will get to explore a less popular, but equally fun and rewarding area where KineFX can be of great help: environment and prop animation. Join us for a beginner/intermediate session where you will get to build something fun and hopefully learn a new thing or two.

Mihnea Stoica

SideFX

Finding Patterns – The Math Behind HEXAGONA
Who likes patterns, is all about procedural systems, loves world-building, and has a not-so-secret obsession with hexagons? I know I do, and that’s what has led me to build HEXAGONA in the first place. If you do too, we’re friends already and you should also come to my workshop where I will be breaking down this project. HEXAGONA is a hexagon-tiled procedural board generator, developed in Houdini, which can be used in different game engines. For this workshop, I will be presenting my approach to developing it, breaking problems into smaller ones, math and geometrical puzzles, and the beauty of finding patterns. All that while actually building a lite version of it with the core mechanics and key features.

Christos Stavridis

SideFX

Houdini Data Pipeline Integration
Digital Content Creation pipelines are complex setups which consist of various workflows and software. Some use Unreal Engine or Marmoset to render, Substance Painter and Designer to shade objects, and Houdini with Blender to create procedural or destructive geometry. Houdini is the perfect centerpiece to orchestrate all of these moving pieces and their respective data. In this session we will look at what it takes to build a Python plugin for Houdini to speed up workflows between these common workflows.

Paul Ambrosiussen

Bismuth Consultancy

Massive Worlds – Crafting World Partition Landscapes using Houdini
In this workshop, learn how to use the EHA “Massive Worlds” toolset to procedurally create, edit and manage massive open world landscapes in Unreal 5.1. Providing a new and powerful pipeline for open world building, the “Massive Worlds” toolset empowers you to use your Houdini Digital Assets with Unreal, at a scale that simply wasn’t possible before. Leveraging new Unreal 5.1 features, such as Landscape Edit Layers, you’ll learn how to use this non-destructive, Houdini empowered pipeline to procedurally shape your worlds.

Erwin Heyms

E-Houdini Academy

PDG for Games
In this workshop, Simon will show the basics of PDG in Houdini to efficiently create game assets and levels. PDG is a powerful toolset that will take your Houdini to the next level. During the workshop, you will learn to setup PDG networks for automation. This will go over creating a large amounts of assets, using your HDAs, creating renders of each asset and handle large asset as input.

Simon Verstraete

Freelance

Fast Game World Prototyping
Leveraging new Unreal 5.1 features, such as Landscape Edit Layers, you’ll learn how to use this non-destructive, Houdini empowered pipeline to procedurally shape your worlds.

Thomas Tobin

Rainbow Studios

Procedural FUTURistic slums

Olimpia will explore the power of procedural generation in modern game development and showcase the Slums Generator, a versatile tool that allows for a range of creative possibilities in building and populating vast game environments in a fraction of the time it would take to do manually.

Olimpia Di Nella

BUas Student

Procedural Sci-Fi Skyscraper

Maze will present his Tool to generate futuristic skyscraper utilizing shape grammar and module instancing for optimized world building in games. He will show how it creates a wide variety of building shapes, intricate paneling, balconies, and exoskeletons.

Maze Pressler

BUas Student

Generating and exporting textures with Houdini Engine

This talk will revolve around exploring how to generate textures from a high-poly mesh within a Houdini tool for Unreal. Alicia will provide insights into the process of creating a procedural cobweb tool for Unreal Engine that outputs game-ready low-poly meshes with baked textures.

Alicia Heredia

BUas Student

Transferring Facial Animation

Facial animation is one of the best ways to bring life to characters, but it can also be very time-consuming. NVIDIA’s Audio2Face allows for a quick facial animation foundation for animators to build on, but its output isn’t optimized for games.

We will be showcasing our Houdini tool that solves this issue by transferring Audio2Face geometry data to game-ready bone animations. It also supports procedural facial rig generation and transfer to a full-body character rig.

Mae van Diesen

BUas Student

Olivier Dral

BUas Student

Procedural Level Generation

This presentation will revolve around procedural generation of levels and rooms using well-known level generation algorithms and methods implemented with the use of VEX in Houdini, exploring how these algorithms can be layered in multiple stages to create a tile-based playable level layout for top-down videogames.

Catinca Matei

BUas Student