An AI-driven Procedural Forest Tool for Unity.
Brief → Houdini via MCP → Unity / URP · co-authored with Claude Code
A node-based generative tool that builds forests automatically, with the workflow itself composed end-to-end through an AI build interface. An artist moves a few sliders (density, slope, altitude, species), and a forest appears on terrain. Authored in Houdini, it loads straight into Unity so the look can be tuned live, without ever opening the 3D package underneath.
The tool, running.
This maps directly onto node-based generative creative-production workflows.
Sole builder, brief to shipped tool.
I designed and shipped every layer: the procedural node graph, the art-to-engine pipeline, the custom GPU-instanced wind shader, and the performance pass, composed through an AI build interface, with the judgment to know when its output was wrong.
The hard part isn't one good asset. It's the system that makes many correct ones.
A creative team needs many on-brand variations, fast, and they need to produce them without a specialist driving the tool every time. Hand-placing assets doesn't scale, and a workflow only a technical artist can run isn't really a workflow the team owns.
Built a node-based generative workflow, driven by controls, not code.
A few sliders, not a tool
Density, slope, altitude, species, and scale live as simple controls. The artist never opens Houdini.
Many elements from one graph
The graph scatters, masks, varies, and transforms, emitting per-tree data the shader reads downstream.
Data-driven wind, not constants
Each tree sways slightly differently from data baked in by the tool, through one GPU-instanced shader.
Same seed, same forest
Deterministic output, so a look can be tuned, saved as a preset, and rebuilt exactly later.
An AI-driven pipeline, from build interface to live engine.
The workflow was composed through Claude Code talking to Houdini over an MCP server, then promoted to a reusable asset and loaded live into the engine the creative team actually works in.
Artists drive the sliders and never open Houdini. The specialist composes the workflow once, then rotates off and the team self-serves.
One workflow, three forests, zero specialists needed.
These are the mechanism behind a speedup, not a speedup claim.
The same pattern I shipped 20+ times at DNEG, where real artists, editors, and compositors drove it in production.
Shipped with CI/CD, QA, and docs across art, engineering, and TD · qualitative adoption, not a headline figure