Mentorship case study · 3 months

Joshua Dixon

Forest of Secrets: a pagoda environment from Maya to Nuke

~~Houdini beginner~~ Intermediate in 3 months

Maya
Houdini
Copernicus
Unreal Engine
PCG
Nuke

Forest of Secrets — The final frame: the Daigoji-inspired pagoda in its PCG forest, finished in Nuke.

Challenge

Joshua, a Vancouver Film School graduate, came in as a Houdini beginner with a clear plan: a Japanese pagoda, based on Daigoji Temple in Kyoto, inside a forest, taken through a full production pipeline.

Approach

He modeled one side of each pagoda section in Maya; Houdini assembled it, scattered the rafters and roof tiles, and made the materials in Copernicus. Heightfields shaped the terrain, PCG in Unreal dressed the forest, and Nuke finished the shot.

Outcome

Forest of Secrets, a finished forest shot with a full breakdown on The Rookies.

The work, step by step

01
Procedural pagoda parts
The pagoda was split into a bottom floor, a repeatable middle floor and a roof. In Houdini, a ray-based setup scatters the rafters and the roof tiles follow the roof curve, with a decal on the front row and a little jitter so nothing looks copied.
02
Dressing the forest with PCG
The PCG graph scatters trees, plants and rocks in separate branches. Splines carve the path and the clearing around the pagoda, and a few elements were placed by hand for composition. Foliage and rocks come from FAB and Poly Haven.
03
Unreal to Nuke, live
With the Nuke Server plugin, Unreal sends depth, Cryptomatte and ambient occlusion passes straight into Nuke, so depth of field and the final grade happen in the comp instead of in Unreal.

In Joshua's words

I had the opportunity to do a mentorship under Mario for 10 weeks, where he took me from a beginner to intermediate level in Houdini and expanded my knowledge of Unreal Engine environment workflows.
Mario has a very personal and flexible teaching method, where each mentorship is tailored to student interests. Before we officially began, we talked for a few days about how we would structure the mentorship and what areas we would focus on to develop the project I had planned.
Mario teaches in a combination of lecture, demonstration, and feedback, giving plenty of opportunity for questions and exploration, and asking for progress between meetings. Many times I would come into our session with an issue I had encountered and a solution I had found, and Mario would show me another way to accomplish it as well.
The way Mario teaches is a testament to his technical expertise, as he took me through modeling in Maya, heightfields and COPs in Houdini, and PCG, layout, and rendering in Unreal Engine, finishing with going over basic compositing methods in Nuke. His comfortability teaching across different software proves his mastery of those tools.
I would definitely recommend doing a mentorship under Mario if you are eager to improve your technical and pipeline knowledge.
Joshua Dixon

Mentor's note

I had the pleasure of mentoring Joshua over the course of three months, during which he went beyond the scope of the assignments, bringing additional research, experimentation, and personal exploration into the work.

During our mentorship, we focused on environment creation across Maya, Houdini, and Unreal Engine. Joshua modeled a realistic pagoda in Maya, developed procedural texturing using COPs in Houdini, assembled a full environment in Unreal using PCG workflows and composited everything in Nuke. He showed strong adaptability when transitioning between tools and maintained a clear understanding of the broader pipeline.

I am confident he will continue developing into a strong environment and technical artist!

Full breakdown on The Rookies Original recommendation on LinkedIn

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