Grounded 2 · Shot FX · Houdini / Niagara
The challenge
A Grounded 2 shot needed wind-driven leaves, with the final scene assembled in Unreal Engine. I needed to shape the motion in Houdini and provide a useful handoff to the engine’s particle system.
The approach
I prepared simplified environment colliders and leaf representations, then used Vellum to create the motion. Keeping simulation geometry separate from leaf variants allowed the setup to reconstruct the leaves from the simulated pieces. A SideFX Labs Niagara export branch packages point-cache data as .hbjson for the Unreal handoff.
The value
The workflow connects procedural leaf preparation, simulation and engine delivery in one shot-focused setup. It gave me a way to develop the effect in Houdini while supporting the team’s Unreal scene, with the simulation data passed through Niagara.
