Introduced last year, Project Pegasus is an internal technical demo aimed at testing procedural workflows in Houdini for creating 3D open-world environments integrated with the latest technologies in Unreal Engine 5. While its predecessor, Project Titan, focused on urban environments, Project Pegasus explores the creation of rural landscapes, including terrain, vegetation, and several artificial objects such as farm buildings and dry stone walls. The result can be utilized in VFX or motion graphics projects as well as game development.
Over the past two months, SideFX has released a series of educational materials based on demonstrations, including videos on terrain generation tools in Houdini and new cloud tools in Houdini 20. The tutorials also showcase workflows integrating Houdini with Unreal Engine 5, including how to use the Houdini PDG network to convert a base input mesh into a high-polygon asset using the Nanite virtualized geometry system in UE5.
In addition to videos, SideFX has released Flora tools developed for the project. The set of "highly experimental" tools for creating vegetation is described as "prototypes... of what may appear in future Houdini tools for working with foliage." According to SideFX, they represent a workflow halfway between procedural modeling and foliage growth simulation. The files themselves are accompanied by videos explaining how the Flora nodes work and demonstrating their use in creating a Scottish pine.
The Flora tools are available for free as Houdini .hip and .hda files, which can be imported and edited in DCC tools compatible with Houdini Engine, including 3ds Max, Maya, Unity, and UE5. Houdini and Houdini Engine are commercial products.