Compositing Props for World Partition with Houdini & PCG | Erwin Heyms & Oscar Cerro | EPC 2025 HIVE
24Learn how to create and composite foliage and props on a Massive Worlds scale using Houdini and PCG. A method that allows teams to iterate and collaborate on procedurally dressed environments, using unified prop grids in Unreal, fully compatible with world partition workflows. The participants will be shown how to use the upcoming Massive Worlds Toolkit v1.2 compositing pipeline. This toolset allows them to combine various sets of Houdini generated point clouds of foliage and rocks from different biomes with road props and RVT decals. Using a PCG driven widget in Unreal, you will then learn how to instantiate or re-instantiate these objects into an open world environment, with the simple click of a button.
Takeways | Attendees will learn how PCG and Houdini point clouds of props and foliage can be composited and instanciated into world partition compatible grids for open world propsing and decoration.
Erwin Heyms is a Procedural Pipeline Consultant & Developer at E-Houdini Academy with over 10 years of professional procedural game-dev experience on titles such as Ghost-Recon Wildlands and Breakpoint at Ubisoft. Since the Launch of Unreal 5, Erwin has been developing the Massive Worlds Toolkit, a Houdini based framework for Open World Construction, which is now being used by several game developers. Acting as a speaker at several Sidefx events of the years, Erwin has also created over 50 hours of freely available Houdini Foundation lectures bringing beginners up to speed with Houdini for Games.
Oscar Cerro has several years of experience as a Houdini Technical Artist at Fracture Labs, and as a freelance developer in collaboration with Erwin Heyms on the Massive Worlds Toolkit. Originally coming from a programming background, his experience with Houdini and Unreal ranges from world building, to procedural tool development for large scale environments. These tools include procedural construction for games, road decoration, biome distribution, and pipeline setup.
00:00 Erwin’s Background and Entry
03:45 Engineering Meets VFX
07:30 Adapting to Procedural Workflows
11:15 Simulation Challenges Explained
14:59 Using Houdini at Scale
18:44 Managing Complex Setups
22:29 Collaboration with Departments
26:14 Continuous Learning Curve
29:59 Reflections on Favorite Projects
33:44 Closing Thoughts