CGCircuit - Houdini FLIP FX: Container Ship vs Monster Wave

https://www.cgcircuit.com/tutorial/houdini-flip-fx-container-ship-vs-monster-wave

Create a cinematic, production-ready ocean FX shot in Houdini by simulating a massive tidal wave colliding with a cargo ship. This advanced course walks through every major phase of the workflow, from building optimized FLIP simulations and meshing, to secondary effects like whitewater and mist, and rendering with Karma CPU. You'll also gain access to high-quality example files—including a detailed ship model—to follow along step-by-step.
A key focus of the course is to use simple Houdini native tools and tricks to achieve the best visual cinematic output. Rather than relying on overly complex setups, the course emphasizes clarity, efficiency, and smart design choices to get professional results. Whether you're aiming to level up your water FX skills or integrate Houdini into your film or game pipeline, this course equips you with practical, industry-relevant techniques for large-scale ocean VFX shots.
Note. This course focuses only on the Houdini FX workflow. The compositing for the final shot is not included. The finished comp was created by Fabian Nowack using Nuke.

Key Course Takeaways

Build Procedural Ocean waves and creating simple keyframmed animation
Build and optimize large-scale FLIP guided ocean layer simulations.
Emit and control realistic Flip secondary simulations,whitewater and spray using both custom approaches and whitewater solver.
Airfield concepts.
Integrate Pyro-based mist and ship chimney effects.
Render ocean FX using Solaris and Karma CPU.

This course is designed for artists with:
A foundational understanding of Houdini SOPs and FLIP simulations
Basic experience with Solaris and Karma rendering
A desire to build polished, cinematic FX shots for portfolio or production use
Ideal for junior to mid-level FX artists transitioning into water simulation workflows.