vreya3D

January Update

Added 2026-01-08 18:24:20 +0000 UTC

Hello everyone,

I want to put a bit more focus on expansion animations over the next few months. The next one will be a shorter project since it’s a fairly simple and spontaneous idea that shouldn’t take too long to make. I mainly just need to find the right model for it, so it’s more of a filling the gaps kind of project.

I spent most of last week and this week learning and experimenting with Houdini because the idea of having a fully procedural workflow for simulations sounded really appealing.

That said, I don’t feel like it simulates physics any better or more realistically than my current setup. I also ran into what seems like solver limitations when changing the shape of a mesh during a simulation if it’s anything other than cloth constraints, like soft body tets. As soon as internal calculations really matter, things tend to become unstable. That’s been a bit disappointing, especially for expansion related work. I could be wrong here, but that’s my conclusion based on my testing so far.

One of the main limitations of my current workflow is that I can’t properly simulate things like clothing ripping apart, which is the main reason I started looking into Houdini in the first place. A hybrid approach might be possible, but in that case the clothing and body meshes wouldn’t interact "properly" since they’d be simulated in different programs.

For the next project I won’t be using any new tech, but I do want to try implementing cloth tearing in future projects. And if anyone here is well versed in Houdini, feel free to send me a message.