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Alexander Vasilenko’s Guided Bubbles & Wet Foam Solver is a custom Houdini solver based on Wētā FX research. Its creator describes two-way-coupled fluid simulation for underwater bubbles and surface-constrained SPH foam. It is distinct from SideFX’s documented Whitewater Solver workflow; the available descriptions do not establish whether Vasilenko’s tool can be downloaded, which Houdini versions it supports, or what license applies.
What is Vasilenko’s whitewater solver?
Vasilenko’s Guided Bubbles & Wet Foam Solver is a custom Houdini implementation inspired by Wētā FX’s published paper Guided Bubbles and Wet Foam for Realistic Whitewater Simulation, published in 2022. The research concerns simulating bubbles and foam so that the whitewater remains visually connected to the underlying liquid.
Vasilenko describes his solver as combining a locally resimulated fluid for underwater bubbles with an SPH foam simulation constrained to the water surface. The Wētā paper is the research inspiration; the custom Houdini solver is Vasilenko’s implementation, not a SideFX product.
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How does it simulate bubbles and foam?
Underwater bubbles use a locally resimulated fluid
Vasilenko says the underwater bubble system uses a locally resimulated fluid with two-way coupling to the bubbles. In practical terms, the description indicates interaction in both directions: the bubble system is coupled to the fluid, rather than being described simply as particles carried by a fixed liquid simulation.
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Foam uses SPH on the water surface
“The foam is handled via an SPH simulation projected onto a 2D manifold of the water surface,” Vasilenko writes. SPH, or smoothed particle hydrodynamics, models motion through interactions among particles. Here, the foam particles are constrained to a two-dimensional representation of the moving surface rather than treated as an unconstrained volume.
He identifies viscosity, cohesion, and surface friction as forces in the foam simulation: “The solver implements standard SPH forces such as viscosity (mu), cohesion (C for strength, beta_c for radius), and surface friction against the water.”
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Manifold advection keeps foam on the surface
As the water surface moves, the solver needs to advance foam particles without letting them drift away from it. Vasilenko describes the procedure this way: “The foam is constrained to the surface via manifold advection: forces are decomposed into tangential and normal components, the normal component is discarded, and particles are projected back onto the water surface using Newton iterations.”
In other words, the method keeps the force component that moves particles along the surface, removes the component that would push them off it, then uses Newton iterations to project particles back onto the surface.
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Cohesion multiplier is a creator preference
Vasilenko supports using either a neighboring particle’s volume multiplier or the active particle’s multiplier for cohesion. He prefers the neighboring-particle option because, in his visual assessment, it produces better foam clustering. That is an implementation preference, not a reported benchmark or independent quality measurement.
How does it differ from Houdini’s native Whitewater Solver?
SideFX documents its Whitewater Solver as a separate workflow that generates foam, spray, and bubble particles from a source liquid simulation. Its documented inputs include emission, velocity, and signed-distance surface data; the documentation also describes OpenCL acceleration for density control. The custom solver’s creator instead emphasizes two-way coupling for subsurface bubbles and SPH foam projected onto the surface.
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| Comparison | Vasilenko’s custom solver | SideFX Whitewater Solver |
|---|---|---|
| Purpose and source | Custom Houdini solver based on Wētā FX’s guided bubbles and wet foam research; described by its creator. | SideFX-documented workflow for foam, spray, and bubbles generated from a source liquid simulation. |
| Bubble treatment | Creator describes a locally resimulated fluid with two-way coupling to underwater bubbles. | SideFX describes bubble particles from a source liquid simulation; the cited documentation does not establish the same locally resimulated, two-way-coupled model. |
| Foam treatment | Creator describes SPH foam constrained to a two-dimensional water-surface manifold, with tangential force advection and projection back to the surface. | Native workflow simulates whitewater particles from the source liquid; the cited documentation does not describe the custom solver’s manifold-advection method. |
| Documented input requirements | Not stated in the cited public descriptions. | Emission, velocity, and signed-distance surface data from a source liquid simulation. |
| Additional distinction | 80 Level reports that the custom solver addresses POP Fluid’s lack of support for variable particle radii. This is a reported feature distinction, not an overall quality or speed comparison. | SideFX documentation describes OpenCL acceleration for density control. |
These descriptions establish differences in approach, not which solver produces better images, runs faster, or is more suitable for production. No independent quantitative comparison is available in the cited sources.
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The public description and industry report identify the solver and explain aspects of its design, but they do not establish a public download, supported Houdini versions, or license terms. Do not assume that a public description means the tool is available to install. Confirm access and compatibility with Vasilenko or an authoritative distribution page before planning a project around it.
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What should Houdini artists take from the comparison?
- For a documented SideFX workflow, consult the Whitewater Solver documentation and check that the source liquid provides its required data.
- If the custom solver’s two-way bubble coupling or surface-constrained SPH foam is important to your setup, verify that you can obtain it and that it supports your Houdini version before building a pipeline around it.
- Treat the variable-radius distinction reported by 80 Level as a feature note, not evidence of superior quality, speed, or production readiness.
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