This R&D focuses on creating a procedural system in Houdini for character ability effects.

The main goal was to build an HDA that gives artists control over the geometry and allows the effect to be art-directed procedurally.

Instead of relying on static geometry, this setup uses animated geometry with changing topology, which can then be brought into Unreal Engine as an animated cache and further enhanced with particles, shaders, and additional VFX layers.

The focus of this stage was mainly on the procedural geometry system and animated cache workflow, rather than on producing a fully finished effect.

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(6 years later in 2026, looking back at this R&D almost six years later, I think there is still a lot of potential in this type of cache-driven workflow, especially when combined with newer geometry-cache and procedural rendering techniques)
https://www.zibra.ai/zibragds