How Houdini Helped Shape The Belief System In Inside Out 2

A belief system is a collection of ideas or principles that helps us interpret our daily experiences, understand, organize, and make sense of the world. While this concept is metaphorical in our lives, it takes on a tangible form in Riley's mind, a world vividly brought to life by the talented artists at Pixar.

CG Generalist Leif Pedersen recently shared an article based on presentations by Brandon Montell, Alyssa Lee, and Eman Abdul-Razzak, offering a behind-the-scenes look at the creation of this realm, from creating strings and water to the final touches of lighting and compositing.

While much of the animation and shading was done using Pixar's proprietary software, Houdini and OpenUSD played a crucial role in bringing the environment to life, powering the particles, water effects, and more.

The Sets and Effects teams collaborated to generate particles at render time using Houdini, adding shimmering subtleties to the strings. However, the water presented a different challenge, one where the memory orbs needed to interact with the fluid, and waterfalls had to be generated using an adapted, flowing version of the same system.

Learn how Pixar artists solved these challenges and crafted Houdini assets to shape the Belief System environment in the article here. Also, join our 80 Level Talent platform and our new Discord server, follow us on Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, Telegram, TikTok, and Threads, where we share breakdowns, the latest news, awesome artworks, and more.