Services
Houdini FX & Procedural Simulation
Houdini is the backbone of everything I build. I take on FX and procedural work as a standalone service: cloth, fluid, particle and destruction simulation, procedural modelling and generative systems, delivered as rendered shots or as passes for your comp team. That includes joining an existing production for the FX shots only.
Written by Marco Mori, 3D artist, Lindau, Germany · Updated 2026-09-08
What kind of Houdini work do you take on?
Roughly four categories, and most jobs are a mix:
- Dynamics and simulation: cloth, fluids, smoke, fire, granular material, rigid body destruction, particle systems.
- Procedural modelling and generative design: forms built from rules, so hundreds of variants come from parameters instead of hands. The creature work covered by 80 Level sits here.
- Look development for difficult materials: fabrics, adaptive surfaces, layered translucent materials, the sort of thing the BASF Design Fabrics project was built on.
- Character and portrait FX: glitch, erosion, particle dissolution and surface deformation on hyperreal heads, as in the portrait studies.
What do you need from the client to start?
- The shot's purpose. What the effect has to communicate, not just what it should look like.
- Camera and timing, or the freedom to define them.
- Reference footage of the real phenomenon, plus one film reference for the stylisation level.
- Assets: geometry that the sim will interact with, in a usable format.
- Technical specs: resolution, frame rate, colour space, renderer, pass list, naming conventions.
- Where it ends up: your comp team, or me.
How does the process work?
The step list is above the FAQ. The core rule: simulate small, decide, then simulate big. Nearly every schedule overrun in FX comes from art-directing at high resolution, where each opinion costs a night of caching.
Selected work
- Hyperreal CGI portrait studies: glitch, particle erosion and surface deformation layered onto photoreal heads.
- BASF Design Fabrics: material behaviour visualised through simulation, for materials that cannot be filmed meaningfully.
- Personal 3D case studies: the ongoing lab where procedural FX and look development get tested before they enter client work.
The 80 Level feature on the procedural creature pipeline covers the generative side in more technical depth than a portfolio page can.
Why hire a specialist FX freelancer instead of a studio?
| FX freelancer (me) | VFX studio | |
|---|---|---|
| Shot count | A handful of hero shots | Hundreds of shots |
| Setup time | Days | Weeks of onboarding |
| Direct art direction | Straight to the artist | Through a supervisor |
| Pipeline integration | Adapts to yours | Yours adapts to theirs |
| Redundancy | Single person | Team backup |
| Best for | Commercials, campaign hero shots, music, one-off FX | Long-form, episodic, feature volume |
The redundancy line is a real trade-off and I would rather name it than hide it. For a single hero shot it rarely matters. For a 200-shot episodic delivery, a studio is the correct answer.
Why Houdini and not Blender or Cinema 4D?
Because procedural work compounds. Once an effect is built as a network, changing the input changes the output without redoing the work, and that is exactly what surviving four rounds of client feedback requires. The full comparison, including where Blender is genuinely the better commercial choice, is in Houdini vs Blender for commercial VFX.
Can FX work be combined with live footage?
Yes, and it is one of the strongest uses of simulation: an effect that interacts with a real environment is a shot nobody could have filmed. That workflow is described under mixed reality production.
Do you take on FX-only roles inside a bigger production?
Regularly. I plug into an existing pipeline, work to the supplied camera and assets, and return passes in your naming convention. It is the lowest-friction way to work with me, and it is how a lot of agency projects start.
Need a shot simulated, or a system built? Describe the effect and the deadline.
Frequently asked questions
What is Houdini used for in commercial work?
Simulation and procedural generation: cloth, fluids, smoke, particles, destruction, growth systems and any setup where the result should be driven by rules rather than keyframed by hand.
Can you join a project for the FX shots only?
Yes. That is a normal setup. I take the shots that need simulation, work to your camera and asset specs, and hand back rendered passes for your compositor.
Which render engine do you use?
Redshift for most commercial work. If a project requires Karma, Arnold or a client-side renderer, that is a scoping question rather than a blocker.
Do you deliver EXR passes or finished shots?
Either. Multi-pass EXRs with AOVs and a slate for your comp team, or a fully composited and graded shot. Say which at the start, because it changes how the scene is built.
Why is simulation so hard to schedule?
Because a sim has to be run before it can be judged, and each run takes hours. Art direction on simulation is iterative by nature, so the schedule needs iteration budget rather than a single review point.
Can a simulation be art-directed precisely?
Up to a point, and Houdini is better at this than most tools because setups can be layered and constrained. But a simulation that is forced frame by frame stops looking like a simulation, and at that stage keyframed animation is the more honest solution.
Do you build reusable procedural setups or HDAs?
Yes. If a client needs a system rather than a shot, for example a generator for product variants or campaign patterns, that can be delivered as a reusable digital asset.
What is procedural creature work?
Building creature forms through rules and growth systems rather than sculpting them by hand, so variations come out of parameters. 80 Level covered that side of my work in a dedicated feature.
Can you take over a broken Houdini scene from someone else?
Sometimes. Send the file and the version. Whether continuing is faster than rebuilding depends entirely on how the network was structured.