Lighting Atmospheric Environments in Houdini | Video Tutorial

By: Saber Jlassi

In this Houdini Video Tutorial, Saber Jlassi will show you how to light, shade, and render complex atmospheric scenes inside Houdini.

Atmospheres are one of the coolest ways to give your environment depth and character in Houdini. Up to this point in our Advanced Asset Creation series, we’ve covered specifically how to create small and large assets. However, we thought it’d be fun to bring it all together and show you how to integrate atmospheres, lighting, and shading to create dynamic and visually interesting scenes.

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The following video tutorial covers everything from how to use atmospheric effects using VDB to showing you how passes can be used in the compositing process to create incredible scenes.

Video Tutorial: Lighting Atmospheric Environments in Houdini

Below you will find a free video tutorial on how to light atmospheric environments in Houdini

If you enjoy the tutorial, we highly recommend checking out our tutorials page where you will find many more tutorials on developing procedural assets inside Houdini.

Video Tutorial: Timecode Breakdown

Intro (0:02)
Thought Process (1:19)
Door Portal (28:05)
Layout Changes (33:44)
Shading Procedurals (41:40)
Bundles (59:01)
Lighting the Scene Part 1 (1:03:58)
Lighting the Scene Part 2 (1:15:23)
Lighting the Scene Part 3 (1:33:04)
Lighting the Scene Part 4 (2:17:39)
Lighting the Scene Part 5 (2:55:52)
Intro to Volume Rendering (3:33:02)
Creating Fog Using VDB Volume (3:41:29)
Takes (3:59:57)
Compositing (4:03:42)
Conclusion (4:41:00)

Learn More about Procedural Asset Development in Houdini

Want to learn more about developing procedural assets inside Houdini? These are a few of our favorite resources from around the web:

We also frequently post about procedural creation processes on our tutorials page.

Create Realistic Landscapes & Environments

Are you serious about wanting to create realistic landscapes and environments for VFX and games? If so, you should check out Environment Creation in Houdini here at Rebelway. The course is an in-depth look at how professional FX studios develop large-scale environments. By the end of the course, you’ll create realistic environments that rival that of your favorite films and games. Here’s a quick preview of the course.