Growing Trees by animated map/weightmap with HDA

Development Character & Animation
, , , ,
1

Hi,

I would like to animate trees on a terrain and use Houdini/HDA to control the speed, randomize pattern, size, etc.
Is that possible in general?

I made a cheap animation some time ago where an animated b/w map controls the size and models of the trees and emits smoke in Softimage/ICE: Wildnis in Gefahr: Orang-Utans in Indonesien | Andreas Kieling | Terra X - YouTube

Is something like that possible in UE4 (by creating a HDA in Houdini) and could you tell me, what keywords I have to search for? Maybe there are any tutorials about that topic?

Thanks alot,