这个带有发光水体特效的梦幻木屋场景是用 Houdini 制作的

Junior Editor

23 October 2026

Mario Sánchez Aguado shared his Houdini water simulation that started as a Maya project, became forgotten for a year, and got revived thanks to Solaris.

Mario Sánchez Aguado shared his mesmerizing water simulation scene of a wooden cabin by the ocean. As an advanced scuba diver, the artist is no stranger to water scenes, and he often creates water simulations, which, as he confessed on his socials, cured his fear of the real ocean.

Aguado began working on this scene a year ago. Back then, he used Maya and Arnold to shape the environment, but the modeling process was too frustrating, and the artist abandoned the project. However, he decided to revive the scene and apply new workflows to the project after spending some time learning USD and mastering Houdini Solaris. 

Solaris combines tools for look development, layout, and lighting, allowing you to create USD-based scene graphs.

"When I came back to it, I went all in on Solaris and Karma XPU. I got the cabin and the fisherman from Big Medium Small, reused rocks, corals, and fish from The Sea's Heart, and focused on what I enjoy the most: lighting, lookdev, FX, and comp," Aguado shared.

Although it was his solo project, to organize the working process more efficiently, the artist approached it as a studio would. He divided the scene into different parts as if those were production steps carried out by different departments. 

"The water was where I had to make the biggest call. My plan was to approach it like a big production, with low-frequency waves for the overall shape and high-frequency detail on top as a separate displacement. But for this shot, that meant very dense geometry and much longer renders. A single plane with the Houdini Ocean Procedural gave me everything I needed," he explained.

For the lookdev, the artist used the power of transmission to the fullest, which helped him control the depth of the ocean. To create the nighttime version of the environment, he scattered lights over the corals and fish to simulate ethereal turquoise bioluminescence. Both versions were completed in Nuke with camera shake, lens effects, and caustic bounces. 

Want to see more of Aguado's work? Check it out on LinkedIn.

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