Hou-DisplacementX
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Welcome! Hou-DisplacementX (v1.0) is a Houdini port of Displacement X, the free web sci-fi height-map generator by Yehor Misiats, itself a take on Windmill's JSplacement. Two nodes ship in the file: a Copernicus generator, and a Heightfield SOP running the same generator that builds a heightfield or displaces wired-in geometry. Shapes, ranges, defaults and sprite packs are the web version's; this port draws them on the GPU. Licensed under GPL-3.0; the asset ships unlocked.
What it does
Each iteration draws one randomly picked shape - rectangles, grids, columns, rows, or full-width lines - into a height map with the machined, panelled look of a sci-fi hull.
- Five shape types plus four sprite packs, each with its own brightness, opacity and blend mode.
- A Seed that reproduces the same map at any resolution, which the web version cannot do.
- Full 32-bit float height, so displacement does not band like an 8-bit PNG.
- Four outputs -
height,normal,basecolor,id- named for Houdini Engine for Unreal's texture types. - The Hou-DisplacementX Heightfield SOP: a heightfield alone, or triplanar displacement of wired-in geometry.
- Runs on the GPU as one OpenCL kernel, so even a busy map cooks fast.
What it does not do
- No anti-aliasing: every shape is hard-edged, as in the original.
- Will not reproduce the web app's map - the random sequence differs, same settings, same look, different map.
- No custom sprite input in 1.0 - only the four original packs.
- A texture generator, not a modelling tool: displacement moves existing points, it adds none.
Requirements
- Houdini 22.0+ (Indie or Apprentice - ships as
.hdalc; FX and Core can load it too, but that switches the session to limited-commercial (Indie) mode, per SideFX). - Windows is the only tested platform.
- A working OpenCL device - the whole map is drawn by an OpenCL kernel.