I face the problem with transferring in the right way simulation, to Unreal Engine.

Generally speaking, I want to make the cylinder with small candies inside (like a snow globe), simulate those physics in Houdini, and move it to UE5 (Don't wanna simulate that in UE physics).

The final effect is player can grab the bottle (cylinder) rotate it and see how the pills move inside the bottle. 

I tried with Vellum and it works with particles but not work after moved with VAT textures to Unreal.

Second try I was thinking of doing like 2 or 4 animations/simulations and transferring there to animated FBX?

Not sure how to do it correctly, can someone give me a tip on how to do it properly?

 

Please post material related to game development using Houdini and Houdini Engine in here.

I'd like to share a small package I made with you, called Geometry Sequence Player. It allows you to bring mesh and pointcloud / particle animations from Houdini to Unity! Here as an example, I created a small surfing game prototype in Unity, with a wave animation imported from Houdini: 

The animations have to be exported as a (textured) mesh or pointcloud sequence, where each frame is stored in a seperate file. After a short conversion with an integrated tool, they can then be played back inside Unity. The package features Editor player controls, Unity timeline integration, a full C# scripting API and runs on almost any platform, including all Desktop systems, Android, iOS and XR.   

But that's what VATs are for!

Indeed, the package mostly covers the same functionality as Vertex Animation Textures However, I found VATs to be quite involved and finicky at certain times. So the approach of this package is simple & stupid, but in return pretty robust and with quicker iteration times. And it even runs with Houdini apprentice! The only drawback is that the sequences are quite large, so for a game where small installation sizes are crucial, this approach is probably not suitable. 

Download it here:

Available open-source and free for non-commerical applications

For commercial use, or to support development, get a copy on the Unity Asset Store 

If you've used the package in your pipeline, I'm super interested in hearing about your experiences, and also any suggestion for improvements or features that you might want to see!

I didn't know I'd ask this on the Hoodini forum, but even if I posted it on Unreal, no one knew, so I posted it here

I'm new to Houdini so I followed a couple of tutorials to create the effect that I wanted (listed below)

To create the effect: 

https://forums.unrealengine.com/t/vat-dynamic-remeshing-from-houdini-appears-corrupted-when-imported-to-unreal-5-2/2043193
 

And to export to Unreal: 

They look great until I use VAT Dynamic Remeshing to export it and bring it into Unreal engine...

In houdini: 


In Unreal Engine

As far as I can tell I did everything correctly and there don't appear to be any errors in Houdini or Unreal. So I’m not sure why the mesh looks so corrupted.

Anyone have any ideas what's going wrong or what I can try?

Thanks!

I set it up like the image above 
It doesn't play in "niagara" at all

OrgPlay.mp4

I'm trying to export an Alembic from H19.5 to Unreal.  I have a baked mesh sequence of 32 frames that I'm importing as a geometry cache.  The problem I'm having is that exporting an alembic via the rop (and file-> export) seems to be dropping the vertex color entirely.  Has anyone here had this issue?  I'm really trying to avoid the full fluid vertex animation pipeline (because I hate it  ) in lieux of geo caches, but I've run into this issue and can't find a way around it.

As a way of confirming, I imported my alembic into Blender, and can see that there's also no color attributes there.  If I export a single frame of fbx, it's there, but I can't use FBX because it doesn't properly export a mesh sequence from Houdini.

As you can see there is no color info (Cd).

Thank you!

Marc.

Is there any way to start sync session wtih python? 

I tried hou.startHoudiniEngineDebugger("hapi"), but there is no options to control "Cook Using Houdini Time" and "Sync Viewport" and it cause a problems for me.

So many options!

Thanks

Compiling the plugin yourself coudl be a solution, process below:

Compilation step

1. Get HoudiniEngine source code

Find the version branch source code you need, clone and download it

Create a new empty C++ game project

Create a new Plugins folder in the project directory and put the HoudiniEngine source code in it

Select the project file XXX.uproject right click, Generate Viusal Studio Project Files

Regenerate the Visual Studio project (because new code is added, the project needs to be refreshed)

Set Houdini version number (very critical)

Modify the Houdini Version in Source/HoudiniEngine/HoudiniEngine.Build.cs to correspond to the locally installed Houdini version

At the same time, modify the VersionName in HoudiniEngine.uplugin to ensure the same version display in the UE plug-in panel to avoid confusion

Compile the project

Open the Visual Studio project file and set the game project as the startup project

Select Debug Editor or Development Editor mode to compile

Then start building and compiling to generate binary files

Test

Start the project, whether it is running normally

Check if the plugin panel starts Houdini Engine

Find an hda file, drag it to the scene, and test if it works

Temporary workers become regulars

The previous compilation process is compiled as a game project plug-in

If the compilation is successful, you can copy it to the Engine/Plugins/Runtime directory in the engine directory

However, it is best to clean up the xxx.obj and xxx.pch files in HoudiniEngine/Intermediate/Build, because the amount of data is large. . .

Summary

A source code, simply set a version number, can be compiled into multiple different versions of Houdini Engine

Of course, the main reason is that the compiler automatically searches for the relevant header files and static libraries in the local Houdini installation directory through the version number during the compilation process.

The version number is used to define the path that the compiler searches for

VS compile log

Therefore, if you don't find an official official compiled version that suits your needs, you can try to compile it yourself, or modify the source code.

Stepping on the pit of the past

• At first, I looked at the official documents and said that it was compiled with UE source code. In fact, the distribution engine is also possible. . .

• The time and hard disk capacity required to compile UE source code is really a bottomless pit. . .

• (Jupiter) And the plug-in compiled from UE source code is installed to the release version, indicating that the version is inconsistent and incompatible. . .

• Therefore, it is best to use which version of the engine (release or compiled version) to use to compile the plugin. . .

• 

________________________________________________________________

Vincent Thomas   (VFX and Art since 1998)
Senior Env and Lighting  artist & Houdini generalist & Creative Concepts
 http://fr.linkedin.com/in/vincentthomas

Using Houdini 18.5 with Unreal 5 early-access.

I have hard time to get my temp and baked mesh turning Nanite on, not working for me.

Anybody succeed "bake"ing generated mesh with HDA in UE5 in Nanite ?

I'm placing Att-Create, in interger, value 1, with the name "unreal_nanite_enabled" as the doc stipulates.

no success

thx in advance

I've just installed that juicy FRESH houdini engine 2.0 for unreal. There is obviously a lack of information as it is so new, and I'm struggling to figure out how to edit my HDA's parameters within a blueprint - 

If anybody has any tutorials or information about this they could point me to, would be much appreciated!

for some reasons I'm struggleing to create non weighted Landscape Layers in Unreal Engine via my HDA.

I tested both parameters (unreal_landscape_layer_nonweightblended & unreal_landscape_layer_noweightblend) as mentioned in the documentation.

Setting up the attribute:

Attribute on the Landscape

Am I missing something in the process of the setup?

I am using Houdini Engine v2 and Unreal Engine 4.27

Cheers,

alex

https://youtu.be/exreMc7CNiU

I complete the whole tutorial without any problem, but in the exportation step (create a RBD_to_fbx select a Note to Export and an Export Path), but after clicking in Render, this process takes a few seconds and it created a .FBX archive empty.

Anyone can help me, please?

Thank you so much

Realtime playback speeds are not necessarily that important.

Does anybody have an idea if this is possible and if how to approach it?

Also for proper realtime playback, we want to able to create 360 latlong Flipbooks.
The opengl ROP currently does not seem to support this.
Any ideas on that?

Thanks a lot
Adrian

FX TD @ Animation Institute - Filmakademie Baden-Württemberg

I have been trying to export RBD simulated geo using Dembones with mixed results. Sometimes it exports, some times it does not. Has anyone seen this sort of behavior before?

is there any way to make this possible? Vat seems like moving meshes but seems like collision position is not applied.

I'm trying to cook PDG TOP network outcome to separate staticMeshes - now it is cooking to the instancer.

Does anyone know is it possible to set it with Python API using the PDGBakeAllOutputsWithSettings() command?

Thanks,

Tomek

I am using ver 18.5.696 of  the Labs tools and Houdini FX 18.5.672 could that be the reason?

Thanks
Alex

Thank You.

camera_import_problem.hip

camera_v003.fbx