Procedural Jellyfish

Overview

This is a procedural jellyfish tool created in Houdini.

Bell & Veins

The bell is procedurally modeled using curves, then I used a CHOPs network to generate a function that drives the bell’s pulsing and upward-moving animation. The veins are generated by finding the shortest path between two sets of points scattered on the bell.

Arms

The arms are modeled using multi-threaded for-each loops to add variation per arm without compromising too much performance, then simulated with the Vellum solver for a natural animation along with the bell.

Tentacles

The tentacles are procedurally distributed along the edges of the bell, then simulated using Vellum as well.

Organs

The organs are created from the remaining curve of an incomplete circle, then perturbed with noise. This also allows for many different variations in the number of organs.