Zanic is an experienced Houdini user, but he was also one of the first freelance artists to try out the precursor to Bifrost, a fluid simulation tool called Naiad. Here, FX technical director and visual effects trainer Igor Zanic, a co-founder with Saber Jlassi of online VFX training website, which specializes in FX and procedural effects-related courses, outlines in simple terms how an artist might begin the process of crafting a waterfall in both Houdini and Bifrost. Bifrost in Maya is now a fully-blown visual programming language that also allows for the generation of procedural effects, although when first implemented into Maya its strength was in fluid simulations. Houdini is well known for its procedural approach to animation and effects and offers a number of solvers, such as pyro and particles, for handling fluid simulations. What if you were asked to build a flowing waterfall for a scene – where would you start? What tool or tools would you use to simulate the flowing water of a waterfall? Arguably the two most used and accessible tools for such a task in VFX right now are SideFX’s Houdini and Autodesk’s Maya Bifrost. They will need to reach the desired outcome of the client, but it can often be up to the artist or studio what tool they may use to solve the problem. In visual effects, artists are often given a problem to solve.

Water houdini