Building abstract forms procedurally can lead to a lot of creative freedom, but it can also mean that you might loos control over what is happening. This doesn’t have to be the case. Here, simonfiedler.de shows how you can have both, walking through working with Volume Trails in Houdini.
Volume trails are a pretty cool tool in Houdini which can create abstract forms
Volume Trails, can calculate a trail of points through a velocity volume in Houdini. The Volume Trail operator allows you to create a polygon stream from each point in the input. This can be useful for quickly visualizing or inspecting volumes. It can also be used as a creative tool, to create abstract forms.
Simon shows how you can set up V-Trails to create some interesting shapes in Houdini, setting up a custom vector volume, using tangents from a curve to control the shape. 3D Noise helps to form the shape.
In the end, Simon talks about using the Volume Trails for particle advection, showing how you can have particles forming the objects of the structure.
