Alexander Vasilenko’s custom Houdini solver adapts ideas from Wētā FX research to simulate underwater bubbles and surface foam as connected parts of whitewater. Vasilenko describes locally resimulating fluid with two-way bubble coupling, then treating foam as an SPH simulation constrained to the moving water surface. It is distinct from Houdini’s documented native Whitewater Solver workflow, and the available sources do not establish whether Vasilenko’s solver can be downloaded, which Houdini versions it supports, or what its license terms are.
What the custom whitewater solver is
Wētā FX’s publication catalog lists Guided Bubbles and Wet Foam for Realistic Whitewater Simulation, research on keeping simulated bubbles and foam visually connected to the underlying liquid. Vasilenko describes his Guided Bubbles & Wet Foam Solver as a Houdini implementation based on that paper. It is his custom solver, not a SideFX product.
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The approach focuses on two related effects: bubbles beneath the surface and foam at the surface. Rather than treating them as interchangeable particle effects, Vasilenko describes separate simulation methods for each.
How it simulates bubbles and foam
Underwater bubbles
Vasilenko says the underwater bubble system uses a locally resimulated fluid with two-way coupling to the bubbles. In other words, the bubbles and the local fluid simulation can affect one another, rather than bubbles being only particles advected by a fixed liquid field. The creator’s description does not provide a quantitative measure of the resulting quality or cost.
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Foam constrained to the water surface
Vasilenko describes the foam as “an SPH simulation projected onto a 2D manifold of the water surface.” SPH, or smoothed particle hydrodynamics, represents fluid-like behavior through interactions among particles. Here, the foam particles are constrained to the changing surface rather than freely moving in three dimensions.
The forces he identifies are viscosity, cohesion, and friction against the water surface. In his description, manifold advection decomposes forces into tangential and normal components, discards the normal component, and uses Newton iterations to project foam particles back onto the water surface. This is the mechanism he describes for keeping the foam on the moving liquid boundary.
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Cohesion control
Vasilenko says his implementation supports cohesion using either a neighboring particle’s volume multiplier or the active particle’s multiplier. He prefers the neighboring-particle option because, in his visual assessment, it produces better clustering. That is an implementation preference, not an independently measured result or a benchmark.
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How it differs from Houdini’s native whitewater workflow
SideFX documents a separate native Whitewater Solver workflow that simulates foam, spray, and bubble particles from a source liquid simulation. It requires emission, velocity, and signed-distance surface data, and the documentation describes OpenCL acceleration for density control. The custom solver’s creator instead emphasizes locally resimulated, two-way-coupled bubbles and surface-constrained SPH foam.
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| Aspect | Vasilenko’s custom solver | SideFX native Whitewater Solver |
|---|---|---|
| Bubble treatment | Creator describes a locally resimulated fluid with two-way coupling to underwater bubbles. Creator description reported by 80 Level. | Documented as part of a workflow simulating foam, spray, and bubble particles from a source liquid simulation. SideFX documentation. |
| Foam treatment | Creator describes SPH foam constrained to a two-dimensional surface manifold through force decomposition and projection. Creator description reported by 80 Level. | Native workflow simulates foam particles from a source liquid; the documented inputs include emission, velocity, and signed-distance surface data. SideFX documentation. |
| Particle-radius 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. 80 Level. | Not stated in the cited Whitewater Solver documentation. |
| Availability and version support | Not established by the public creator description or 80 Level report. | Documented by SideFX; the cited documentation page does not establish a comparison of performance or output quality with the custom solver. |
These are differences in described methods and documented requirements, not evidence that one workflow is generally faster, better-looking, or more production-ready. The available sources contain no independent or quantitative solver comparison.
Can you download it, and which Houdini versions does it support?
The public description and industry report do not establish a download location, supported Houdini versions, or licensing terms for Vasilenko’s solver. No acquisition instructions can be confirmed from those sources, so check the creator’s own current distribution information before planning a project around it.
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The original Wētā FX paper is listed in its publication catalog as a 2022 publication: Wētā FX research and technology. That date is the paper’s publication year, not a solver release date or compatibility indicator.
What the evidence does—and does not—show
The creator’s description establishes the solver’s stated design: coupled subsurface bubbles, surface-constrained SPH foam, and configurable cohesion behavior. SideFX’s documentation establishes the inputs and broad workflow for its own native solver. The sources do not provide numerical benchmarks, an independent quality comparison, or verified availability and compatibility information for Vasilenko’s custom implementation.
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