Returning Home
Returning Home is part of Rebelway's Cinematic Lighting in Houdini with Solaris course. This project was a turning point for me. Here I truly learned how professional productions work, leveraging the power of USD and Solaris, and how to design a solid workflow from the ground up. I wanted to train well in this area because I knew that mastering a modern pipeline would allow me to create my own projects with fluidity, coherence, and scalability.
My first real pipeline with USD and Solaris
One of the first things I learned in the course was to build a clean and logical folder structure. This might seem trivial, but it's the foundation for creating pipeline tools that don't fail, that know where to find everything, and that work exactly the same across all shots or projects. From there, everything started to fall into place. Thanks to Solaris and USD, I was able to work in a nodal, organized, and non-destructive way. Just like in production, I divided the script into "departments." Although as a solo artist I could have done everything in a single block, I decided to maintain this structure because it gave me much more clarity, optimization, and control, and it also mentally trained me to work like in a real studio. If it had been a team, I would have exported a USD per department so everyone could move forward without stepping on each other, but for this project everything stayed within the same file.
Materials that react like in production
In this project I did completely procedural lookdev, applying advanced techniques widely used in production. I created materials that responded to attributes generated directly from USD in the geometry, which allowed me to texture automatically using procedural maps and intelligently mixed textures. This generated natural variations and a realistic finish without having to do UVs or manual texturing for each part of the environment.
The bomber and its trail
I solved the bomber animation with a simple curve synchronized with the camera movement so it would appear exactly on the desired frame. From two vertices located at the wing tips, I generated a particle simulation that followed the plane's trajectory but dispersed over time due to turbulence. This gave it that organic behavior you see in real aircraft when they cut through the air.
To reinforce the shot I added more FX: the water, created through displacement with the Houdini Procedural Ocean; a general volumetric fog; and multiple fog detail elements from USD assets made in production. I placed each of these strategically to reinforce depth, atmosphere, and light directionality.
Mix of techniques for a believable environment
I built the environment layout with all kinds of approaches: assets placed by hand, instancers to populate wide areas, Stage Manager to clean attributes, and occasional use of the Layout node (though it's still quite buggy). This combination allowed me to build a coherent and visually interesting scenario without compromising time or structure.
Solaris and absolute control
This is where I enjoyed myself the most. Solaris's lighting tools are literally a marvel. You can position lights from four different modes: Edit, Specular, Diffuse, and Shadow. Each one allows you to control a specific aspect of lighting without messing up the others. This allowed me to place bounces, fills, and shadows exactly where I wanted, like the sun's reflection on the bomber's metal or the lights that ran across the water's waves. The control was absolute and the experience felt completely cinematic.
Professional workflow with USD and real optimization
I learned to create an optimized render workflow using automatic USD exports for each shot. I organized the render into four distinct layers, each with its specific phantoms, mattes, and render settings: the bomber, the env, the fog, and the fog details. This was key for cost control: for example, the fog detail needed many more samples, while the rest could stay lighter. By separating them I could save hours of render time and have total flexibility in composition.
Final look and cinematic effects
In Nuke the comp was relatively simple because I had to deliver the assignment that same week. I did the final lookdev of each layer, adjusted integrations, reinforced atmospheres, and added details like a heat wave on the bomber's engines and lens effects. With this I managed to lock the shot, give it presence, and maintain the cinematic style the course was looking for.
My first project with a real pipeline
Returning Home was a project I greatly enjoyed. After completing it, I felt for the first time that I was working like in a real production: organization by departments, optimized workflow, USD, Solaris, procedural lookdev, advanced lighting, volumetric FX, render by layers, and professional comp. Although I already came from very technical projects, this was the one that showed me how all the pieces of the pipeline integrate together. And that, for the future, is worth its weight in gold.