I was tasked with creating flowmaps for all the rivers in the open world. To do this, I created a number of custom tools to support importing terrain and assets into houdini to feed into procedural systems that would generate water flow that worked with our shaders. The result was a system that grabbed each river and it's surrounding environment and approximated water flow with collisions and foam generation that could be run over just a few minutes, without having to do a full water sim.
Special thanks to the following tech artists who helped make these flowing rivers come together, and all the world artists that helped support this effort.
Kurt Diegert - Lead Environment Technical Artist
Logan McClure - Environment Technical Artist (shader)
Matt Bullister - Environment Technical Artist (shader)
Joshua Aoki - Houdini Technical Artist
Rogelio Olguin - Lead Texture Artist
Steven Carroll - Senior Environment Artist
Mahreen Fatima - World Artist