SideFX Houdini and the World-Building of Ubisoft’s Far Cry 5

SideFX Houdini is known for its procedural workflows. Houdini empowers artists and designers to create vast and detailed environments that would otherwise be impossible to build by hand. From towering skyscrapers and sprawling cities to rugged mountain ranges and flowing rivers, Houdini allows environments to be generated with logic and realism.

Its ability to simulate natural phenomena, craft architectural detail, and evolve entire landscapes over time has made it indispensable in the film and gaming industries.

One of Houdini’s approaches to world-building can be found in Ubisoft’s Far Cry 5. Released in 2018, the game introduced players to Hope County, Montana, a fictional place that feels as real as the world outside your window. Every farmhouse, church, and dirt road shows how procedural design principles can craft believable environments that become central to storytelling.

Hope County, Montana

Hope County of Far Cry 5 may be fictional, but its landscapes and architecture are deeply inspired by geography. Ubisoft’s design team studied real places such as Great Falls and Cascade County, drawing inspiration from their small towns, farmland, and rugged wilderness.

They picked these elements from sparsely populated counties like Petroleum, Treasure, and Golden Valley to create a world that felt authentically rural. Even its geographic placement was carefully considered, with Hope County described as lying southwest of Missoula, near the Lolo National Forest and Bitterroot Mountains.

This level of grounding mirrors the logic of Houdini’s procedural systems. Just as Houdini enables designers to generate environments that combine natural realism with creative flexibility, Ubisoft crafted Hope County as a landscape that balances authenticity with narrative needs.

Architecture and Infrastructure

The architecture of Hope County is as much a character as the people who inhabit it. Towns such as Fall’s End feature diners, gas stations, motels, and churches that portray rural American life. Roads connect scattered farms and villages, while remnants of an abandoned railway hint at an economic past that has faded. These elements make the county feel alive.

By procedurally generating road networks, settlement patterns, and architectural details, Houdini creates visual spaces and environments that communicate cultural and social context.

In Far Cry 5, this becomes especially clear in the way the cult known as Project at Eden’s Gate reshapes the county. Everyday spaces are transformed into strongholds, bunkers, and symbols of control, showing how architecture and infrastructure can be narrative tools as much as functional ones.

Regions and Identities

Hope County is divided into three major regions, each shaped by the influence of a different member of the Seed family. John Seed’s Holland Valley reflects fertile farmlands and small-town life, Faith Seed’s Henbane River is steeped in hallucinogenic landscapes of manipulation, while Jacob Seed’s Whitetail Mountains present a harsher, militarized terrain.

These distinct environments give players a sense of progression and diversity, making the county feel vast and multifaceted.

For procedural design tools like Houdini, this mirrors the ability to generate diverse yet connected regions within a single world. Each zone can have its own identity. Different terrain rules, vegetation patterns, or architectural styles. This layering of regional identity is what makes Hope County so believable.

Evolution from Far Cry 5 to New Dawn

The strength of Hope County’s design became even more evident with the release of Far Cry: New Dawn in 2019. Using the same county map, Ubisoft transformed the landscape into a post-apocalyptic version of itself.

Towns and roads remained recognizable, but the environment was reborn with overgrowth, altered wildlife, and surreal skies. The continuity made the world feel familiar, while its transformation gave it entirely new life.

This is the kind of environmental evolution that Houdini excels at. By modifying procedural rules, artists can simulate how worlds adapt over time. Whether through natural growth, decay, or catastrophic change. The shift from Far Cry 5 to New Dawn is a case study in how digital environments can evolve.

SideFX Houdini and Game Design

The parallels between Hope County and Houdini’s strengths are clear. Both emphasize handcrafted detail and large-scale procedural systems. Every building and roadway in Far Cry 5 feels intentional, yet the scope of the county could not have been realized without procedural logic guiding its structure.

Houdini allows for terrains inspired by real geographies, urban planning simulations for road networks, and settlements. It gives designers the flexibility to construct environments that are playable and believable. Additionally, the spaces grow and change alongside the narratives they serve.

From its rural architecture and abandoned railways to its cult-driven transformation and eventual post-apocalyptic rebirth, Ubisoft’s Far Cry 5 exemplifies how procedural thinking can create alternative worlds.

By starting with systems and layering them with story, Houdini makes it possible to design environments that become characters in themselves. And that is exactly what Hope County represents.

For those interested in exploring these techniques, Spatial Fragmentations 3.0, an advanced Houdini workshop by PAACADEMY, offers an opportunity to learn procedural modeling, VEX scripting, and simulations for architectural design. The workshop is scheduled for September 6–7, 2025. Register here!

Images courtesy of Far Cry 5 via SideFX Houdini