An interesting challenge

The other day, my supervisor at work asked me to create a series of assets geared toward Houdini "noobs," so to speak, who may or may not be artists and who are new to the procedural workflow. Our goal was to come up with assets that were simple enough for someone with zero Houdini experience to be able to load the asset, play with it, and understand what it does. Below are some of the assets I created.

Sweep Along Curve: Use the Sweep SOP to sweep a polyline along a curve.

Stacked Crates: Allows the procedural stacking of various sized boxes. After the lowest box has been positioned, the lower can change the number of boxes and adjust the offset between them.

Copy to Points: Copy objects to the points of any input object, using the Copy SOP. Random scales are optional, and the multiplier for the random scale is adjustable. This could be used for something like scattering vegetation on terrain.

Instance to Points: Same as CopyToPoints, but using the Instance node.

I found it unexpectedly challenging to create these assets without Python/HScript, which, as a computer scientist, is my go-to problem-solver. I actually had to create each asset solely with Houdini nodes, with the assumption that the user of my assets would have no programming knowledge whatsoever. I learned a lot about Houdini through this exercise and found myself approaching problems differently. It was a fun challenge and a good workout for my brain!