Zerg Hydralisk The above image is a familiar sight to any Strategy gamers: the Hydralisk, one of the more commonly used Zerg units in Blizzard's popular RTS StarCraft. The Zerg, one of three playable races in the game, is known for using a fighting strategy of numbers over skill; swarming the enemy with vast amounts of weaker units in order to overwhelm them. So popular was the game, and so known were the zerg for this strategy, that the term 'zerging' has come to be used as any time someone uses a similiar strategy, even if completely unrelated to the game StarCraft. Since the Zerg are so well known for moving in large numbers, I decided to use the hydralisk for my Houdini particles experiment.

 

Houdini Bones In order to accomplish this, I would have to learn how to do bones and rigging in Houdini. I was able to find some information on the Side Effects site to get me started. I have outlined the basic process of using bones for those who may also wish to try it out.

 

Start off in the viewport by doing TAB > BONES. Take note that BONE(S) is only available in the viewport.

Click to place the bones in succession. When finished, right-click to end. Then you must edit the regions which the bones affect the mesh. Do this by TAB > EDIT CAPTURE REIGIONS.

Now pull the points to expand the region. Make sure to check all viewports to make sure no parts of the mesh are left unaffected.

Now we are ready to apply the bones to the mesh. Do TAB > CAPTURE GEOMETRY. Then click on the mesh and right-click to select.

Next, click on the root for the bone chain and right click to select. Now, if you rotate one of the bones you will see the mesh deforms with it.

Inverse Kinematics For inverse kinematics, follow the same workflow, but as soon as you create the bones node, at the top change options from no kinematics to inverse kinematics. You can also change your bone chain node to the left. Then, once you capture geometry, transform the bone chain target node to move the entire mesh.

 

Start off in the viewport by doing TAB > BONES. Take note that BONE(S) is only available in the viewport.

Textures Below is the base model, then the model with displacement map, and finally the fully colored model. The maps themselves can be seen to the right, to see how they affect the final render.

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