Build a complete anime-inspired water system in Houdini 22 — entirely in 2D. Learn OpenCL, UV manipulation and Copernicus' new toolset through hands-on modules, then bring it all together in a full stylized shot of a paper boat on water, finished with anime, VFX and photographic grading techniques.
Anime water doesn't behave like water. It's a surface of moving shapes — bands of highlight, refracted shimmer, a caustic that reads as a caustic long before it's physically correct. Chasing that look through a FLIP sim is slow, expensive, and fights you the whole way.
This course takes the other road. You'll build a complete stylized water system in Copernicus using nothing but 2D techniques — height fields, UV manipulation, and OpenCL you write yourself — the same thinking that drives real-time VFX and traditional 2D animation, brought into Houdini 22 and pushed further than either does alone.
Write kernels that solve real look-dev problems — not a language tour. You'll understand exactly what every line is doing to the pixels.
Advection, distortion, flow and layering. Once you see water as coordinates being pushed around, the technique generalizes to fire, smoke, magic and cloth.
Refract from Height, Height to Caustics and the rest of the new nodes — what they're doing under the hood, and how to push them toward stylized results.
The workshop focuses on practical workflows and ways of thinking you can apply to your own shots. Learn how to approach a look, choose the right technique, and build systems that give you precise, art-directed control.
By the end, you'll have the workflows to create and direct your own stylized water — in this project, and beyond it.
Build the pieces first, then assemble them into a complete, graded shot.
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[Instructor Name] is a Houdini artist and technical generalist with a background in procedural effects, look development and stylized rendering. This course draws directly on that production experience to teach practical, project-based workflows rather than isolated tutorials.
The focus throughout is on helping artists build the technical and creative judgment needed to take a shot from a blank scene to a finished, graded result — and to keep using that process long after the course ends.
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