Greetings! I'm a few months away from finishing up my MFA and I'm currently taking a gaming elective.

The character I'm planning on building is based on Japanese mythology, but for the sake of clarity, I'll just describe it as a “mud monster” or “lava creature” - a character with a constant flow of thick fluid that is running or dripping down its body (not dripping off its body - just a flow on its body).

I was curious if there are techniques that can be created in Houdini Engine that would work in Unreal Engine 4.24 to create a continuously melting or dripping effect? I know if I stayed inside Houdini it'd be fine, but sending things over to Unreal is where I'm unsure.

I am still extremely new to Unreal Engine and my Houdini knowledge would be described as “artist-level”.

Any suggestions or advice would be fantastic!

Thanks,

Paul

Hi, Paul,

I have no idea what an “MFA” might be and the only computer game I ever play is Solitaire, but of course I know what a “mud monster” is, with Spirited Away being one of my (if not the) all-time-favorite movies.
Kevin Smith had a “Golgothan Crip Demon” in “Dogma” that might, maybe, help as a starting point - I don't know what is possible in Unreal Engine as far as vector displacement goes (which I think would be the best approach, having a suitably “muddy” base mesh and then layers of randomized mud blobs peeling/moving along limited areas with “hero-mud-blobs” being able to get instanced and move off from the main mesh).
The most simple approach I can think of is a bunch of (maybe even procedurally created) morphs that allow you to let “muddy blotches” move downwards an area of the skin, so that you can vary the speed of movement and even layer such morphs on top of each other.

Hopefully this is inspirative

Marc

Yes! The character in Spirited Away has a similar look to what I'm thinking of. I was just watching someone's video on creating sort of a splashing, bubbling mud in Unreal Engine as well. They were using geometry from Houdini that was then used with UE's particle system to create a fake splashing, bubbling effect.

Oh, and MFA is basically a terminal degree - masters of fine arts. It's the equivalent, I guess, to an MBA in business. Universities won't hire you full-time anymore if you don't have a terminal degree of some sort, so at age 50 I'm back in school….

Thanks!

Paul

Ha, I passed 50 myself … and have given up on University a LONG time ago. No wonder I don't know squat :-)
If UE has a particle system, combining that with morphs/texture-animated displacement should get you really far really fast, I think.

Marc

Hi. I'd suggest simplifying things and baking out a looping texture sequence of Normals and Diffuse from a lava flow or something similar. You could try using the same texture to offset world position in your material but my experience has been that it doesn't look quite as nice as one would hope.

You could also try using a basic sin in the material to offset world position based on the uvs of the character.

Mike