Portfolio
A selection of my work (34 items)
Probably one of the most iconic helmets of the silver screen. Originally designed by famous Ralph McQuarrie, and sculpted by Liz Moore and Nick Pemberton.
Houdini 20.5 came with an updated Sculpt SOP, which until now I didn’t have an opportunity to test out. Having acquired Dominik Lange’s excellent SDF Modeler addon for the program, and a similarly impressive Alexey Vanzhula’s Modeler 2025, I wanted to try out the combination of the three in some traditional destructive sculpting and modeling process inside Houdini.
As I was looking for a challenge, I decided that the stormtrooper helmet, with its mixture of hard surface and organic shapes, and widely known appearance, would be a perfect choice for this endeavor.
Sculpting, retopo, subdivision modeling and composition were accomplished in Houdini. The only thing that was not, are the textures, which I found faster to paint in Substance Painter (single 4K UDIM) than to construct in Copernicus, which was in Beta stage at the time of asset creation.
The model is featured on Modeler for Houdini channel on YouTube.
Tools
Houdini Substance Painter
Some random Christmas assets gathered on a desk.
Background assets (boombox and the clock) come from PolyHaven.
Tools
3D Coat Blender Substance Painter Houdini
Social media banner made for the Green Manalishi Band’s gig at Mechanik music club. A variation of GMB’s DOKU poster from May 2024.
Tools
Inkscape
Procedural generator of terrazzo surfaces that I created in the new COPs (Beta) which were introduced in Houdini 20.5. The video is a demonstration of seven presets that I made to mimick various terrazzo surfaces that I found on the Internet.
Tools
Houdini
Remote control of Equation KYT-30BR fan. Modeled in Plasticity and then passed to Houdini for further processing.
Tools
Plasticity NVil Houdini Substance Painter
A vector poster that I created for the Green Manalishi Band’s gig in Dzielnicowy Ośrodek Kultury Ursynów. Variations of the design were used by the band for the next year.
Tools
Inkscape
A very popular international brand of lighters. Their lighters come in various sizes, shapes and igniter types. With or without adjustable flame lever. The model is a rework of one of my oldest assets and is based on a physical reference.
Tools
NVil Houdini Substance Painter
Probably one of the oldest plumbing tools. According to some sources, the adjustable screw-based design quite possibly dates back to early 19th century. It is still in production in an unchanged design. This one has been used heavily, but is still in a good shape and will serve many generations of new plumbers.
Skeleton joints were animated procedurally with CHOPs.
Tools
Houdini NVil Substance Painter
Visualization of a linen chest, or rather a tall linen shelf with doors and drawers — a furniture piece that I needed to be manufactured for one of my apartments. I designed it in Plasticity using real measurements and then retopologized and unwrapped it in Houdini. The retopologized model was textured in Substance Painter and uses one 2K pine wood PBR texture, while renders come from Karma XPU Hydra delegate. The project which I sent to carpentery service also included FreeCAD blueprints of the furniture.
Tools
Plasticity Houdini Substance Painter
An old battered watering can which was very common at the time of Polish People’s Republic. My family used this type of can (similarily worn) to water plants in their vegetable garden. I’m not sure which Eastern Bloc country they originated from, but the design was not standardized. Variants had a similar shape and I think were built from the same materials, but were differed in minor details, like the number and location of ribs on the basin, the metal bar supporting the funnel, size of a handle, etc. Most likely these cans were produced in different national factories, possibly accross many Eastern Bloc countries.
The model is semi-procedural. High-resolution subdivision geometry was created procedurally and the base geometry for the subdivision-friendly retopo mesh was derived from the high-res so that it adapts to it whenever the high resolution model changes. Destructive editing was limited to creating edge loops for proper geometry flow of the low resolution model. Textures on the other hand were all procedurally generated.
One of references I based this watering can on can be found on this archived page.
Background environment was assembled from PolyHaven models.
Tools
Houdini NVil Substance Painter Blender (Cycles)