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Procedural Building Generation

For this project I used Houdini to create a procedural walking golem that can move around on a terrain. The golem has a building on top of it that can be fully customized and infinitely expanded by the user.

Showcase

Screenshot

Demo Video 1

SampleRender.mp4

Demo Video 2

WalkingRender.mp4

Inspiration and Reference

The design and the concept is based on the Walking Mausoleum from Elden Ring, A walking entity that roams around the world and will turn into a permanent landmark when defeated.

User Control

The user is able to control various aspects of the golem as shown below:

Implementation

All the features, including the 3D assets, are fully created using Houdini.

Screenshot of node network:

Breakdown

The building on the golem is created by stacking multiple floors on top of eachother. each level has a basic polygon cylinder as its base shape, and then the following components are added on top:

  • Borders & Decoration Placed at the top edge and bottom edge of the level, with optional decoration shapes on top.

  • Pillars & Decoration Placed on the side edges of the level, the decoration on top includeds a extremly simplified squab mesh.

  • Procedurally placed assets Sampled from a preset of 3 different decoration models, all also modeled in houdini.

  • Support sturctures Curved beams that connect to the floor below, only generated if the size difference is appropreate.

  • Stacking At the end, all floors are stacked on top of eachother.

  • Golem Body A simple base for the golems body, fractured into smaller rocks using a voronoi pattern.

  • Bell procedurally modeled Bell under the golems body, it is also animated based on a simple string simulation.

  • Trees Placed at the side of the golem's body, based on a user defined count, created with L-Systems.

  • Golem Leg Created with the same voronoi pattern like the main body, leg count is based on user input.

  • Skulls Human skulls are scattered at the base on the golem's legs for decoration based on the in-game design.

  • Skeleton The legs are then rigged procedurally and deformed based on a procedurally generated skeleton.

  • IK Movement The skeleton can then move around a defined path on other geometry using Inverse Kinematics;

The golem will them match the pose of the skeleton and walk on the terrain.

  • Particle System When the golem's leg steps on the ground, particles are spawned in the animation.

Past Submission Content

Submission2:

Created the basic shape of the structure. Added a fully functioning building generation tool with border, pillars, simple assets and support. there are toggles for border and pillar decorations and it also supports different sided polygons for every floor.

Submission 1

A very basic building tool based on Simon's tutorial (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uIe97023sDk&t=979s&ab_channel=SimonHoudini)

Future Improvement

This was a really fun project! If given more time, here are the main details that I would still want to improve on:

  • Improve visuals on rocks to look more realistic
  • physics on plants: have them shake when golem steps
  • optimization (current implementation runs slow!)

Contact

Contact over discord is prefered for any questions!

id: @nebulirion