Recreating cotton candy in houdini

[richard_mcd_green]

Hi all,

I'm trying to produce a cotton candy style render, and I found this tutorial for doing it with volumes in Modo: https://www.3dartistonline.com/news/2014/01/how-to-create-clouds-and-candy-floss-in-modo/

Does anyone have any ideas on recreating this look in Houdini? I've tried various types of noise in a volume vop, but nothing seems to get anywhere close.

-Richard

[thebrettwalter]

you could try getting the shape you want for the cotton candy by drawing a curve, using the point numbers to store a directional vector, then sweep pscale ramped circles along the curve, mesh the output, convert it to a volume, scatter points inside and transfer the curves directional attribute to these points. Give the points another attribute which uses the gradient of the volume they are inside so they have a second vector which points outwards, this could then be used as the cross product of their inherited upwards direction to angle the vectors so that they spiral around and up the curve, like in some tornado tutorials you may have come across. You could then use a volume trail to get your strands from the points. Up the point count and control the pscale of your points before rendering. I'd probably start with something like that.

[kleer001]

It looks to me like all the art is in the noise. I'd start with marrying an Perlin noise with a high frequency modulous or tweaked tan function. It's whatever the "space-swirl" procedural function is doing. The math is probably somewhere to be found. Once you get that the rest should be easy to reproduce this effect.

 

If it were me I'd prefer to do a more literal execution, investigate how cotton candy is made then work out a quick and easy model to make that. Then move on to shading and lighting experiments.