There is always a greater or lesser deposition of organic and inorganic substances in our oceans. This includes, for example, the calcium carbonate shells of diatoms, dead plankton and everything that marine life emits. This continuous shower of material is called marine snow, or ocean dandruff.

The idea of writing a VEX programme for Houdini that simulates the movement of marine snow in the ocean came to me during an exciting presentation at FMX 2024 in Stuttgart. Weta had presented just such a model there, but without going into details or even revealing anything about the code. In the end, it was only clear that the script runs in Houdini. I have programming experience, but hardly in the simulation area and mainly in Python. So far I had mainly written batch tools, i.e. programmes that execute repetitive processes, e.g. creating shaders, importing assets, etc. The Marine Snow project seemed manageable to me and a good start to do something in the simulation area. So, let's dive i...