Hi,

Im not sure what to expect from Engine for UE4, there is no documentation(is there?).

Can we create custom Blueprint nodes that will perform certain operations ?

The one I have in mind is to analyze Static meshes with SOPs, calc volume or area and output float value.

ie. calculate area of StaticMesh component and write it to Actor's variable.

possible ?

cheers

Taki maly Quote zeby ostudzic twoj zapal troszeczke:

ttvdsfx
… Unreal static mesh generation does not work in Game mode - only in Editor, that code lives in the engine itself, not the plugin…

Wiec zapomnij o uzywaniu HEngine w trybie Play do czegokolwiek. I chyba tak bedzie do co najmniej wersji 3.0 lub dluzej.

Poza tym Blueprintow nowych nie zrobisz. Za dobrze by bylo. Musialoby to przeciez jechac na Houdym, a jak nie dziala w trybie Play to po co? Chyba Fabric Engine z tym moze byc szybszy i pozwalac na tworzenie wlasnych BP. Ale oni jeszcze nawet wersji 2.0 nie wypuscili, wiec temat takze zamkniety.

Hi,

Just to confirm:

1. There are no docs for Engine for UE4 as of yet. We're currently trying to get things ready for the official release of the plugin. Afterwards, we'll see what we can get in terms of docs.

2. There is no Blueprint support for now. It will be a while actually before we can add Blueprint support because Blueprints are inherently a runtime (during gameplay) concept and Houdini Engine is not quite ready for runtime. Therefore, it doesn't make sense to add Blueprint support until we're ready to tackle runtime.

In the mean time, if you don't need to calculate volume/area of dynamic StaticMeshes, you can just create an asset that takes geometry as an input and displays its area as a Label parameter in the Details panel. You can then paste that value in your Blueprints as a constant.

thanks guys for replys, all clear now.

cheers

damian
Hi,
it doesn't make sense to add Blueprint support until we're ready to tackle runtime.

Is there any update about that? I'm not sure I get your point about the runtime issue. Being able to bake to Blueprints (with custom variables or using python now that ue4 supports it) is not related to runtime, for instance a friend made an Auto car rig for UE4 in H and it's working wonderfully but the fact that you can't author blueprint as well (again not talking about runtime here) makes the tool half useful

This is an old thread indeed.

We do have docs now:

https://www.sidefx.com/docs/unreal/ [www.sidefx.com]

I think We do have the option to instance and attach existing Blueprints via Houdini Engine. (See special attributes and groups in the docs.)


I can totally see how it would be great to be able to generate Blueprints from Houdini Engine. And it doesn't have to do with Runtime, but rather with organization.
First step would probably be a method to bake multiple different things for example static meshes, light placements and instanced static meshes (with manually specified names) into one Blueprint.
Next you would want to be able to define the construction and runtime scripts. The way this could be implemented is that you could pass a detail string attribute and there you paste the code that would generate the Blueprint nodes.
In Unreal Blueprints you can select a network of nodes and copy paste the whole thing. As long as the context is the same it should work fine. One issue is that you need to create any parameters that you want to use, but you could work around that by creating a Blueprint class with those parameters and then work with an instance of that. That would require that you can choose in Houdini Engine which Blueprint Class you want to bake to. But then you might as well save yourself the trouble of doing the whole copypaste of Blueprint nodes. After all, you would want to create those Blueprint Networks in Unreal anyway and you likely don't get procedural advantage by doing them in Houdini

Tldr, here are some RFE suggestions:
1. Simplification and fine grain control over how everything gets baked. (Should it be baked into the scene, as one static mesh, as separate static meshes, instanced static meshes, hierarchical instance static meshes, or placements of assets already existing in Unreal or whatever l. Currently those options are all over the place when they could be handled in a far more unified way. Changing the bake type from one to any other should be very easy and straightforward.
(I imagine you would have one string attribute that indicates name, another string attribute for bake type - basically an enum- and a transform attribute for pivot location and rotation. Note that the name as well as the pivot as well as the bake type can give you separation.

Then if you want to change bake type, you simply change the bake type string. And if you want to bake an asset in Unreal to location you would do the same thing but also change the name string to contain the asset path.
Covering all different bake types in the same way makes it much easier to use.

It should be also possible to determine whether assets get baked into the same Blueprints or separate ones. This would probably require another string attribute or a naming convention.

2. Ability to choose class of Blueprint that you bake assets to (as copy or instance or modification of that Blueprint).

- I would like some feedback / discussion on those ideas and thoughts.

I think what you’re suggesting is generating ue4 components through Houdini engine. It’s more likely that data generated by an HDA can be accessed and modified in blueprints. Please see Damien’s post on v2.0 for more details.
https://www.sidefx.com/forum/topic/67922/ [www.sidefx.com]

Mike