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Making water adhere to a moving character in Houdini is a procedural effects problem, not a single switch: the artist must manage collisions against an animated surface, keep particles attached where needed, and decide how they should drip or splash. A report by Emma Collins for 80 Level, published 5 October 2026, describes Senior FX Artist Milad Sãvar exploring several ways to control that interaction, with character animation credited to Creative Technologist Alessandro Cracolici.
What the Houdini experiments explored
Sãvar’s reported R&D focused on water adhesion, dripping, splashing, and surface interaction on animated characters. The article names a set of techniques rather than presenting one finished recipe:
- Custom VEX and a SOP Solver for collision handling.
- Particle controls for body adhesion and splash dripping.
- POP Fluid and Gas Tension workflows.
- Custom VEX controls for velocity and position targets.
- Noise sampled directly from the source.
- Post-processing intended to repair gaps between particles.
These techniques suggest the key challenge: the simulation must respond to a surface that changes position and shape while producing droplets and splashes that still read as water. The report does not supply a reproducible node graph, parameter values, benchmark, or head-to-head evaluation of the approaches, so it cannot establish which technique performs best or provide a step-by-step build.
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Vellum fluids
In its Houdini 22.0 Vellum fluids setups documentation, SideFX describes fluids as particle-based and integrated with Vellum dynamics. Fluids can interact with grains, cloth, and soft bodies; density, viscosity, and surface tension influence their behavior. SideFX summarizes the role of the latter this way: “Surface tension controls a fluid’s tendency to contract and create drops or tendrils.”
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SideFX documents shelf-tool, DOP-network, and SOP-network setup routes. A shelf setup can provide a starting point, but it still needs simulation configuration; choosing a setup route does not by itself solve animated-character adhesion.
Surface tension in MPM
SideFX’s Houdini 22.0 MPM surface-tension documentation compares point-based and grid-based surface-tension computation within MPM. SideFX describes the point-based method as generally more accurate and stable but slower, making it suitable for smaller effects such as a droplet on a leaf. The grid-based method is faster for large particle counts but less accurate and stable. SideFX also notes that particle-level collisions can improve accuracy with thin colliders at additional computational cost.
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Those trade-offs apply to SideFX’s MPM feature; they are not performance results for Sãvar’s reported POP Fluid or Gas Tension experiments. Use them as workflow context, not as a ranking of the artist’s tests.
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SideFX distinguishes particle-based FLIP, which can create splash-like fluid motion moving through a scene, from volume-based fluid, which it describes as glue-like and confined to a container. That distinction can help orient a solver choice, but it does not establish which solver was used in every test described in the 80 Level report. SideFX’s Houdini 22.0 guide to making splashing water is a separate reference for splash-oriented setups.
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What makes animated character-water interaction difficult
A character’s surface is a moving boundary. Water must collide with it as it deforms and moves, while the simulation must preserve enough fluid volume and avoid visual gaps or unwanted separation. These concerns are not unique to a particular Houdini project: a 2019 paper by Minjae Lee, David Hyde, Kevin Li, and Ronald Fedkiw, “A Robust Volume Conserving Method for Character-Water Interaction,” discusses volume loss and boundary-condition challenges in animated character-water effects.
The paper proposes a different method: a volume-of-fluid solver on a skinned tetrahedral mesh near the character, coupled to a standard Eulerian solver for bulk fluid. The authors say it enables effects including adhesion and anisotropic porosity. This is useful technical context, not a description of Sãvar’s Houdini setup.
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How to choose an approach for a shot
The sources do not provide a fair performance comparison among Sãvar’s experiments, so choose based on the effect and constraints visible in the shot rather than assuming one named workflow is universally best.
- For localized droplets or tendrils: surface tension is central to the desired contraction and shape. SideFX’s MPM guidance identifies point-based computation as an option for smaller effects when accuracy and stability matter more than speed.
- For larger particle counts: SideFX describes grid-based MPM surface tension as faster, with a trade-off in accuracy and stability.
- For thin animated colliders: SideFX says particle-level collisions can improve accuracy, while increasing computational cost.
- For a Houdini setup route: Vellum supports shelf, DOP, and SOP approaches. The right route depends on the surrounding simulation and how much direct control the shot needs; the documentation does not claim one route is best for character adhesion.
- For visible particle gaps: the report mentions post-processing as an explored remedy, but it does not specify the operation or its limits. Treat it as a reported technique, not a drop-in fix.
What the report does—and does not—provide
The report says Sãvar shared a Houdini HIP file, but its current availability and terms should be confirmed on the 80 Level article itself. The report does not establish a downloadable tutorial, a commercial license, or that the file contains every experiment in a reusable form.
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For artists trying to reproduce the work, the practical takeaway is to treat the named techniques as a map of areas to investigate: animated collisions, particle attachment, tension, velocity and position targeting, source-driven noise, and cleanup. The available account does not contain the node-level details needed to reproduce a particular result exactly.
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