Soft bodies
When creating a 3D model, the focus is on how it visually looks from the outside. Where a traditional 3D model is hollow inside, a soft body has a volume with mass and weight. The ultimate dream of various sectors – including medical imaging, medical training and police investigation – is to create a real-time soft body simulation. In such interactive simulations, for example, an organ can be cut and a physically correct reaction of the fat tissue, muscle tissue, blood vessels, etc. is displayed at the moment. The technology is not yet so far that this is possible.
2D to 3D: Building environments using photoshop input
Often only 2D data is available from buildings, machines or environments that contain information about how something is constructed. When creating a 3D environment, it is also faster to draw a floor plan than to build an environment yourself in 3D. The purpose of this case was to explore the possibilities and workflow regarding the construction of a 3D environment based on 2D input.
Scalable bodies & clothes
To provide clothing for a digital character, simulations are done with 2D patterns that are draped around a body. This is a process that can take a lot of time, because the simulation takes time and the 2D patterns may have to be adjusted with each iteration to adjust the result of the simulation.
If the same clothing needs to be draped on different characters or avatars, it can be a lot of work to adjust the patterns and simulation settings so that the final clothing fits the same way on different avatars. The aim of this use case was to see from the perspective of the entertainment sector and the clothing industry how we can automate the scaling of clothing simulations between different avatars using 3D procedural techniques.
Leaf material for 3d production
Simulating plant growth has had social and scientific relevance for a long time for various purposes, mainly for agriculture. This takes into account the biological research that shows the influence of the plant hormone auxin on growth. This knowledge has been converted into a mathematical model for the simulation of leaf growth. In addition, a growth function, which is influenced by auxin maxima on the leaf margin, determines the shape of the leaf. The literature describes techniques that are biologically accurate, but are not intuitive due to their complexity and are also time-intensive. Simplified models can be found, but often lack identifying characteristics, such as serrated edges around the blade and true-to-life veining. For this use case, the mathematical model of leaf growth and shapes from Runions et al. was used in combination with a simplified leaf shape.
Plant growth
There is an overlap between procedural generation and artificial intelligence. In addition to using AI to build procedural 3D models, procedural 3D can be used to train AI faster. AI algorithms need a large amount of annotated data to teach the algorithm what to do. Procedural 3D can help with this because it can generate a huge amount of annotated images with variations of the object.
Packaging tool
We made a proof of concept that generates packaging in Houdini automatically and as optimally as possible for the safe transport of fragile objects. We used an online library of scanned models from the Smithsonian museum. For the development of the tool, we based ourselves on the three most comprehensive methods of packaging. Instapak, where an object is surrounded by a foam material, cushion or foam packing, where the objects are cut out of an insulating material, and brace packaging, where the artifacts are held in place by a wooden construction.
Procedural configuration in augmented reality
Using real-time engines and parametric models, we can offer stakeholders the ability to modify 3D models in a real-time environment and immediately see the result. The goal of this case was to create the workflow in such a way that it could be displayed on a mobile AR device (smartphone, hololens, etc).
In this use case, a parametric table was chosen as an example to work with. We opted for Rhinoceros and Grasshopper software because they are very suitable for computer-aided manufacturing, rapid prototyping and product design. In addition, Grasshopper offers various plug-ins that made surfacing, meshing and communication between applications very easy. In this use case we set up the communication between Grasshopper and our Unity application via UDP (user datagram protocol) because it is low latency and requires little overhead. For the AR implementation, we used the Vuforia framework using image trackers.
Runtime procedural generation
There is software to build procedural 3D content in a modular way. In addition, the 3D content is often generated in advance and can be used in a real-time environment such as a game engine in the form of pre-made or pre-baked assets. In this way of working, it is not possible to adjust the procedural structure or manipulation of parametrically constructed elements during the execution of the real-time application. This means that a procedurally constructed 3D model or environment cannot dynamically adapt to real-time user input, for example based on gameplay in the context of a game or the scanned environment in the context of an augmented reality application.
Workflow comparison by building a city
In this use case, a comparison was made in the workflow of both the Houdini integration to Unreal and the elaboration in Unreal Blueprints. To make the comparison, we chose to generate a city layout based on medieval Bruges. In addition, the possibilities of real-time integration in a game engine were demonstrated on the basis of the case.
Houdini propping pipeline
Propping in the game design and VFX world is dressing up spaces and landscapes with objects. This can range from placing stones and trees in a large park to decorating an attic room with cardboard boxes and documents lying around. Placing objects in a room is still often a manual process. The procedural propping pipeline is an example of a streamlined working method that does not detract from the artistic process.
Automatic house division
There are already many examples of implementations that can create houses in a procedural way. It often concerns houses where only the outer walls and the roof are generated. Within level design of games or buildings in the background, in many cases it is not necessary that the interior is also built. When a player has to enter and explore the houses in a game, there must of course also be interior walls and doors that connect the different rooms. The goal of this use case was to create a tool with which different building layouts can be generated in a quick and easy way.
Procedural generation in Virtual Reality
Runtime procedural 3D is still mainly used for the same purposes: world generation, player creation and world destruction. The goal of this project was to explore runtime procedural 3D in which the artist can modify the world using VR controllers, giving artists more tools to build the world than just the editor and inspector.
Generative design of room furnishings
Generative design is a very useful way to explore programmatic and automatic design and produce an instant overview of measurable scores. Automatic optimization requires a lot of computational power and time to obtain a usable room layout. For complex rooms with many objects, that can easily go up to 20,000 iterations. Scoring is the most intensive process. Without a scoring system, this system can also be used for real-time generation.
Component based shape synthesis
Component based shape synthesis can be useful to facilitate rapid design exploration and reuse of existing 3D models. There is enormous potential in this technique to expand 3D content libraries or even simply to divide existing models into modular components.
Genetic mutations
As the subject of the test case on which we could test a mutagen tool, we chose a simplified parametrically constructed creature blockout in Houdini. Creature block-outs are a simple geometric representation of a creature that can be worked out at a later stage for use in a game or movie, for example. The block-out largely determines the creative view. A mutagen tool can be a very useful way to quickly generate variations of a procedurally constructed model with a minimum of user input while still retaining sufficient control over the results. The method guarantees unique results because the values are randomly generated. In addition, the method is very fast.
3D Asset creation
A classic example for the use of procedural 3D in the gaming industry is the creation small tools that accelerate the creation of 3D objects . In certain games, the in-game weapon is prominently displayed on the screen. In these situations a lot of detail and variation is expected on the weapons to keep it visually appealing. The different parts of the rifle can differ per type of weapon. In this use case a gun was used as an object to illustrate the usefulness of procedural tools.
Procedural Textile Generation
For a renown Belgian carpet textile manufacturer, we created a workflow for procedurally generating a photo-realistic carpet. We used Houdini, an innovative software package mainly used in the VFX industry to procedurally render and create 3D content, for example special effects in movies. Houdini allows a technical game artist to predefine how the content should look and act by means of scripts and algorithms. This allows great flexibility in rendering a variation of similar but unique visuals of 3D objects.
