Cold Bay Module 1 by Diogo Guerreiro

This is Module 1 of Cold Bay and the Bears, and it’s all about the groundwork. You build a cold, rocky bay from scratch in Houdini, set up lookdev in Solaris, and render it in Karma. No river sim yet, no bears — that comes in Modules 2 and 3. This one gets your terrain, shaders, and scatter solid.

🎯 What you’ll learn

• Build and art-direct terrain with advanced height field workflows
• Add detail with geometry post-manipulation techniques
• Create custom hierarchical UVs for large environments
• Set up layout and lookdev in Solaris with USD
• Build complex shaders with MaterialX
• Scatter rocks and plants with procedural systems
• Work with the Solaris Instancer and layout tools
• Control water flow direction with spectrum customization
• Use dynamic procedural masks for calm, natural zones
• Render and optimize the full scene in Karma

✅ Requirements

• Skills: Basic understanding of Houdini SOPs, nodes, and rendering concepts
• Tools: Houdini with Solaris and Karma enabled
• Hardware: Minimum 16GB RAM, dedicated GPU, 3-button mouse

📝 Description

This isn’t a button-click tutorial. You start with raw height fields and push them until they feel like a real place — eroded banks, broken rock detail, flat calm spots where water would settle. Diogo shows how he layers procedural masks to break up repetition and keep the scale believable.

Then you move into Solaris and switch mindset to USD. Layout, instancing, and lookdev all live there. You’ll build MaterialX shaders that hold up at wide angles, scatter rocks and plants without killing performance, and use the Solaris instancer to keep the scene light and editable.

Water gets special attention. Instead of a flat plane, you tweak the spectrum to drive flow direction and get that cold river-meets-bay look. By the end you have a clean, render-ready Karma setup that’s prepped for what’s next — whitewater in Module 2 and groomed bears and salmon in Module 3.

🧑‍🎓 Who this course is for

• Environment and generalist artists who want a practical Houdini terrain workflow
• Houdini users who know SOPs but want to get comfortable in Solaris, USD, and Karma
• Freelancers and studio artists working on TV, documentaries, and natural environments

🧑‍🏫 About the Author

Diogo Guerreiro started in 2011 as a 3D modeler assistant at Deep Blue Films, where he spent 7 years and became VFX supervisor in 2016. In 2019 he founded CGimagine, a VFX house focused on TV series and documentaries. That background shows — his approach is practical, shot-driven, and built for real production constraints.

🏁 Final Result

• A complete, portfolio-ready cold bay environment — procedural terrain, MaterialX shaders, rock/plant scatter, and directed water — laid out in Solaris/USD and rendered in Karma, ready for river simulation in Module 2.