Post by Alexandr Samuilik

"City Generator on a Calculator" — Or how I built a procedural urban system on a 2015 MacBook Air. Massive thanks to SideFX. Houdini is the most logical software I’ve ever used. After 5+ years in 3D and 4+ years making Environment Art for Microsoft Flight Simulator, my path to proceduralism started weirdly. I love contrasting styles: Nolan, Villeneuve... and Tinker Bell. I asked Gemini AI why I like both. It analyzed my mindset and pointed me to Houdini. A total match. With Gemini as my digital mentor, here’s how I built this tool while fighting for every megabyte of RAM: The Constraints & Logic The Kitbash: Modeled directly in Houdini to force my hands to learn the logic. VEX vs. Nodes: Combining Houdini’s native nodes with micro-VEX scripts for specific tasks proved much more efficient than pure VEX. The Hardware Trap: This Mac hates native instancing. To survive, I packed all geometry (Pack) and used layout-identical Proxy Cubes. PolyExpand2D: Copy-spacing heavy roads onto points would kill my hardware. I relied entirely on PolyExpand2D, using custom 2D VEX noise (X/Z only) to generate flat ring roads. The Overlap Nightmare: Shortest-path logic created overlapping edges. Standard Fuse/Clean nodes wiped out width attributes. My solution? A fast VEX snippet that subtracts edges of the 2nd input from the 1st. Bugs gone! The Blend Layer: Houses align via VEX vectors. I added a density ramp (tall center, low outskirts) and a blend attribute for organic height transitions. What’s Next? Adding custom curve inputs and precise primitive deletion—if my old Mac survives! P.S. I wanted to add a beautiful render, but decided to spare my motherboard. Gray viewport is life! 😅 Video below! Thoughts on this optimization workflow? #Houdini #SideFX #ProceduralArt #VFX #EnvironmentArt #TechArt #GameDev #VEX #IndieDev

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