Alejandro Pérez Sánchez Shows How to Create an Initial State for a Water Simulation in Houdini 16.5

Working with particles and fluids is fun, and initially can seem like they are difficult to control. That doesn’t need to be the case. Art-directing fluid simulations come down to knowing the tools. For instance, when you are creating a water simulation, you can choose an initial state, rather than wastefully spinning a calculation only for a particular segment. You can do this by setting an initial state.

3D artist Alejandro Pérez Sánchez shows how you can create a start for a water simulation in Houdini, and still have the particles interact with all the other dynamic objects in the scene.

You can use a Geometry File in Houdini to specify the state. All you need to do is define a POP SOP as its output.