Quick Wind Tunnel

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Free Tutorials

Usually you’d find pyro setups behind all kinds of explosions, fires and sometimes fireworks, but how about something more calm? Something like a wind tunnel used to evaluate the aerodynamic properties of cars, trains and planes? (Please do not use this setup to evaluate any aerodynamic properties, it’s a visual setup, not necessarily a scientifically accurate one.)

In this tutorial we’ll go through the steps necessary to build a wind tunnel using Houdini’s pyro toolset. We’ll talk about emitting smoke, building a virtual fan to blow the somke over our test surface and setting up our simulation parameters.

This is Stefan Sietzen’s original tutorial which I’m referencing in the video.

Download Project File (.hip)

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7 Comments

  1. 06:25 – How can you do negative axis for the velocity? Say -Y or -Z?

    • Hi Aki,

      simply set the desired value in the “Default Value” fields of the pyro source node.

      Cheers, Mo

  2. Jean-Luc

    Hi Guys.

    Thanks for the great tutorials! I am trying to make a smoke stream that goes outward for the source (like a wide open cone) and I’m having trouble getting the velocity to apply. When I create velocity vectors, they only direct the smoke on the creation frame and then the smoke follows a mysterious non existent horizontal velocity. I don’t understrand where the horizontal velocity is coming from since I have none in that direction.
    Any ideas would be very appreciated!
    example script here: https://www.dropbox.com/s/1iivfzv426jtg1n/wind_tunnel_outwards_v001.hiplc?dl=0

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