There are also an incredibly strong set of other tools that come with the heightfield focused on manipulation. Simulating meteors landing? You can take that geometry and use it to generate quick and easy masks for further erosion or heightfield adjustment. That, combined with patterns, hand drawing masks, scattering and distorting allow for what I like the most out of the toolset which is fast artistic control. There are other tools, to be sure including some really fine control options like VOP and Wrangle nodes that work specifically with heightfield data for advanced users.

As for your question regarding the realistic look, reference was the key here! I have some relatives in South Africa and their photos were incredibly inspiring. I personally love PureRef for gathering, organizing, and storing tons of photos. Where Houdini comes in was the previously mentioned control. It didn’t take me very long at all to start matching the natural forms and shapes that I found in references of the Drakensberg mountain range. Once I had those forms, that same control allowed me to set up the composition and area I knew I wanted the piece to be focused on.

In the end, every software has its individual strengths. World Machine has been around for years and has the support of some incredibly strong plugins like Geo Glyph. Houdini is definitely a new player on that scene but a strong one and as I mentioned above to me, the true strength lies in the ease of terrain specific art direction. Control is the name of the game and it’s what let me constantly iterate and tweak and the speed that I wanted (and see those tweaks as fast as I was making them).