EVERYTHING PROCEDURAL
EPC2025
22-25 April 2025
CONFERENCE ON PROCEDURAL GENERATION FOR GAMES
meet and share knowledge
From Tuesday April 22 to Friday April 25 2025 Breda University of Applied Sciences will host the Everything Procedural Conference for a variety of lectures, talks, demonstrations and masterclasses in the field of procedural content generation for games on our beautiful campus. The event offers many opportunities to meet and share knowledge with fellow developers.
The first Everything Procedural Conference took place in 2016. In the years since we have gained strong recognition as a leading conference in the field of procedural content for games.
Conference
THURSDAY 24-04-2025 & FRIDAY 25-04-2025
One of the Many Ways to Build a Procedural City
Creating a vast and dense virtual city is often considered the holy grail of procedural generation. While there are many ways to achieve this, the task would be impossible without constraints and limitations. In this talk, Larissa will discuss the process and design decisions that enabled the creation of a massive procedural city environment in Unreal Engine 5, where every building can be entered, using a custom procedural generation framework.
Larissa Davidova
Independent Game Developer
The Procedural Systems behind Dungeon Alchemist
Dungeon Alchemist is a fantasy mapmaking tool that employs procedural systems to allow its users to quickly generate beautiful, professional-quality battlemaps for their roleplaying games. In this talk, Karel, the lead programmer of Dungeon Alchemist, will go over the different procedural layers that make this happen. He will cover a wide range of topics, from terrain generation and room layout design to low-level mesh manipulation.
Karel Crombecq
Lead Programmer - Briganti
Revisiting Snake - PCG at runtime in UE5
On top of being used to generate offline, the PCG plugin in UE can also generate at runtime, with gameplay interaction. In this presentation, Adrien will revisit a classic game: Snake with a PCG twist. He will show us how to have gameplay elements impact the generation at runtime, but also how to profile the cost of PCG with some hints on how to adapt it to different platforms like Mobile. All while using the latest and greatest of PCG in UE 5.5.
Adrien Logut
Epic Games Montreal
Music Algorithm Smorgasbord
Niklas developed custom music software that enables music to react much more dynamically to game events than conventional tools allow. In this talk, he will walk you through several of the algorithms he uses and showcase how they sound in action.
Niklas Nygren
Game Designer / Adaptive Music Specialist - Nifflas' Games
Why You Should Open Source
Mythica is a company focused on building foundational tools for procedural game development. Slater Victoroff will explain why open sourcing our tools is the best choice for both our company and the industry. We’ll explore the challenges and benefits of open source and why you should consider it too.
Slater Victoroff
Mythica
Generating the World of Pax Dei
Learn how Mainframe creates the massive world for their MMO using Houdini, Unreal Engine 5, and a small team. This talk covers everything from technical design philosophy and pipeline development to key details and lessons learned.
Eetu Martola
Lead Technical Artist / Co-founder - Mainframe
Creative Support for Game Writing: How LLMs can Complement Human Creativity
While the generative power of LLMs is exciting, using them purely for direct content generation comes with challenges—plagiarism risks, unsafe outputs, and a tendency toward homogenization. At Embark, the ML and narrative teams have been experimenting with alternative applications, focusing on mixed-initiative workflows that enhance rather than replace human creativity. Though still in an exploratory phase, this work has provided valuable insights into the potential and limitations of LLM assisted writing. In this talk, Ashwathy will showcase prototypes of the tools they’ve been exporing, discuss the challenges encountered, and share how these experiments are shaping their understanding of writing with LLMs in games.
Ashwathy Revi
Embark Studios
Project Artemis: Generating worlds from the top down and the bottom up with Machine Learning
At PLAYERUNKNOWN Productions, the long-term goal is to create interesting worlds where thousands of players can coexist and experience emergent gameplay. In their conference talk, Joey and Patrick will discuss how the studio combines machine learning (ML) and procedural techniques to generate terrain for their games. Their projects, Prologue and Preface, showcase how they use ML to generate worlds on large planetary scales (Preface) and interesting game levels on small scales (Prologue). These ML methods are seeded by and feed into more classical procedural techniques. By combining these two techniques, PLAYERUNKNOWN Productions are on their way to achieving their goal of creating interesting worlds which encourage emergent gameplay.
Joey Faulkner
PLAYERUNKNOWN Productions
Patrick McCaffrey
PLAYERUNKNOWN Productions
Building the World of Hyper Light Breaker in Houdini and Unreal
In this presentation, Len and Christian will cover how a small team at Heart Machine utilized Houdini and Unreal to build a procedural world for the open-world rogue-like game: Hyper Light Breaker, currently in Early Access on Steam. In order to make every run feel unique but intentional, a directed procedural world pipeline was built from scratch working closely with design and environment art departments. A custom data-driven sub-system in Unreal populated surface features like trees, grass, and architecture, while terrain variants were generated in Houdini.
Len White
Lead Technical Artist - Heart Machine
Christian Sparks
Senior Technical Artist
Creative ember from Nodevember to December
Over the last couple of years, for Nikola, Nodevember has been the perfect launchpad for exploring procedural modeling and animation through quick (and occasionally more elaborate) experiments. Using Houdini as a primary tool, these explorations pushed the boundaries of creativity within the constraints of the event’s themes. This talk will delve into the technical challenges faced, the artistic decisions made, and the lessons learned along the way, offering insights into how constraints can fuel new perspectives.
Nikola Damjanov
Principal Technical Artist - Nordeus
Procedural generation in Prologue : Go Wayback!
During this talk, Remco and Micheal will share their experiences working on Prologue: Go Wayback! They will take us from the implementation of procedural techniques, the use of PCG inside of Unreal, and working with machine learning in their terrain pipeline with Houdini to the challenges and limitations they encountered in the process.
Remco van de Ven
Prologue : Go Wayback! PLAYERUNKNOWN Productions
Micheal van den Berg
Prologue : Go Wayback! PLAYERUNKNOWN Productions
Worlds from Words
Superworld demonstrates how LLMs transform natural language into procedural Houdini workflows, instantly generating terrains and cities from text prompts. Our pipeline automatically manages thousands of technical parameters, making sophisticated Houdini capabilities accessible to anyone regardless of technical expertise. This revolutionary approach represents the future of creative tool interaction, where AI comprehension meets procedural power to democratize content creation while preserving artistic control.
Thomas Tobin
Supermodel
Apex 101
Apex is still pretty scary and new for most existing Houdini artists, this talk Matt Estela will provide a jargon free explainer of the problems Apex is trying to solve, and a bridge from assumed Houdini knowledge into Apex
Matt Estela
CGWiki Author
To be announced
To be announced
To be announced
To be announced
To be announced
To be announced
To be announced
To be announced
MASTERCLASSES
TUESDAY 22-04-2025 & WEDNESDAY 23-04-2025
HOUDINI BEGINNER PRODUCTION
tuesday 22-04-2025
wednesday 23-04-2025
This masterclass will be on-site and run over the course of two days (Tuesday and Wednesday) from 9:00 to 17:00. To participate you need to bring your own laptop or hardware. Tickets include drinks, lunch and a conference ticket.
PROJECT SKYLARK
Creating a Procedural Stylized World!
In this two-day beginner workshop, you will learn the fundamentals of tool-making with Houdini and Unreal Engine 5. Our focus is on creating stylized assets procedurally by leveraging tools that speed up asset creation. In Unreal, we develop various tools that help us build stunning scenes – including houses, foliage, and bridges. Additionally, all textures will be created using Houdini’s new COPs toolset.
Simon Verstraete
Julian Bragagna
Lea Kronenberger
Marn Schokker
HOUDINI ADVANCED PRODUCTION
tuesday 22-04-2025
wednesday 23-04-2025
This masterclass will be on-site and run over the course of two days (Tuesday and Wednesday) from 9:00 to 17:00. To participate you need to bring your own laptop or hardware. Tickets include drinks, lunch and a conference ticket.
Deep into Elderwood: APEX, COPs & Advanced Modelling
In this two-day advanced workshop, we will use Project Elderwood and Natsura to demonstrate how Apex can be pushed far beyond rigging to create powerful simulations and flexible 3d modelling tools. We will also show how the addition of Copernicus to the Houdini toolset simplifies complex photogrammetry workflows that previously relied on multiple tools, enabling artists to waste less time on roundtrips, automate repetitive tasks, and get from raw-scan to in-engine results much faster.
Over the course of several hands-on workshops, we will build a working modelling tool that highlights when Apex based modelling tools make sense (and when they don’t). The Apex sessions will be broken up by short Sops and Copernicus based tutorials and examples of plant modelling and scan processing.
No previous Apex experience is required, but a strong foundation in procedural modelling and Houdini is recommended.
George Hulm
Feike Postmes
HOUDINI ADVANCED MASTERCLASSES
tuesday 22-04-2025
wednesday 23-04-2025
This two-day masterclass will feature a collection of advanced Houdini deep dives delivered by leading Houdini experts.
This masterclass will be on-site and run over the course of two days (Tuesday and Wednesday) from 9:00 to 17:00. To participate you need to bring your own laptop or hardware. Tickets include drinks, lunch and a conference ticket.
Tops Masterclass
A walkthrough of Tops by CGWiki Author Matt Estela, from first principles through to complex production level workflows.
Matt Estela
CGWiki Author
Destruction VFX Techniques with Houdini and Unreal
The focus of this masterclass will be to demonstrate several techniques for fracturing geometry within Houdini and Unreal and using those fractured assets inside Unreal for real-time destruction. The class with be divided into three different approaches for creating this destruction, using Houdini fractured assets with Niagara Systems and Point Caches, using Houdini fractured assets with Chaos simulations and finally fracturing and simulating with Chaos tools in Unreal while triggering Niagara Systems to spawn dust and debris.
Chris Chapman
NetherRealm Studios
LLM-powered Houdini Digital Assets
This hands-on workshop guides participants through creating their first LLM-powered Houdini Digital Asset (HDA). We’ll start with the basics of setting up Ollama locally, then learn how to design and implement a practical tool that leverages large language models to enhance your Houdini workflow. Participants will learn how to efficiently pass parameters between Houdini and LLMs, avoid common pitfalls like context overload, and structure their tools for optimal results. The session culminates with an exciting demonstration of using vision models to analyze and refine Houdini-generated content, opening up new possibilities for iterative creation. Perfect for Houdini users looking to incorporate AI into their pipeline, no prior machine learning experience required.
Thomas Tobin
Supermodel
More to be announced soon
Bringing Environments to Life with Geometry Nodes
tuesday 22-04-2025
wednesday 23-04-2025
This masterclass will be on-site and run over the course of two days (Tuesday and Wednesday) from 9:00 to 17:00. To participate you need to bring your own laptop or hardware. Tickets include drinks, lunch and a conference ticket.
Everything will be achieved using Blender’s Geometry Nodes system. Previous experience with the system is not required.
Simon Thommes
Blender
Jacques Lucke
Blender
STUDENT SHOWCASE
FRIDAY 25-04-2025
to be announced
To be announced
To be announced
To be announced
to be announced
To be announced
To be announced
To be announced
to be announced
To be announced
To be announced
To be announced
JOIN OUR NEWSLETTER
Discount is provided for students, alumni and group tickets.
Please provide the correct promotion code at checkout.
EPC2025_BUASSTUDENT – For BUas students
EPC2025_ALUMNI – For BUas alumni
EPC2025_STUDENTS – For students
WHERE TO FIND US
- Monseigneur Hopmansstraat 2, 4817 JS Breda