Simon Verstraete covers how to make clouds for games using Houdini and Unreal in just two minutes.

Houdini shelf tools are a really great way to quickly get things happening. Take, for example, the cloud tools. You can get fantastic looking clouds without really knowing anything about Houdini; that’s how easy it is to use. Check out this new tutorial from Simon Houdini channel (Simon Verstraete) that shows how you can use the cloud tools in Side FX Houdini to export what you need for a game engine like Unreal.

Creating Clouds for Games.

The tutorial covers how to convert base geometry or any other geometry to volumes. Once you have a volume, you can apply a cloud node and cloud noise, which will apply other effects that you can customize. 

It’s amazing that with just a few nodes in Houdini, you can get some complex looking clouds in your viewport. 

Verstraete then covers how to create the masks needed for Unreal. “By placing lights in Houdini, you can create this effect. There are more ways of doing this and even getting direction masks for more complex materials.”

“In Unreal, you will see how to make a base material and use the mask to control the cloud’s different colors. This can help you fine-tune the cloud for the scene.”