One thing that I learned thanks to programming and animation is not to start coding or animating without getting references and a plan to stick to. So before even opening Houdini, I first spent some time on Google/Youtube gathering pictures, articles and documentaries on Greek Temples, making patchworks on Paint with summaries of important informations so that I can retrieve them quickly when needed. And of course I didn’t look at other Houdini Greek Temples projects (I bet there are quite a lot aha) to avoid getting influenced.
I will not write here everything I learned, some of the informations are somehow irrelevant for a Houdini breakdown. Maybe I’ll put in this section some things about architectures and the Greek civilisation when I’ll get some time.
So, here is the plan (not sure how long it will take me to finish all of this but that sounds fun):
- First, I’ll model procedurally the different elements that can be found in a Greek Temple.
- Then, I will manage to find a way to let Houdini arrange those elements following architectures rule, while letting as much user control as possible.
- Finally, I’ll try to add noise and variation to model natural events (the acidity from rainwater, time…) that can alter the temples.
Greek Temples have 3 main styles: the Doric, Ionic and Corinthian orders (see the picture below). My goal is to start with the Doric order: it is the simplest one and can be found in really important sites such as Delphi (which is my favorite) or the Parthenon. Of course, I need to keep an as modular as possible approach so that I can adapt quickly to get the two other orders.
Now, let’s start with Houdini by trying to create the columns!
Step 1 is here!
Before it gets messy 