Hi

Only just getting started with Houdini, though have some good video tutorials and understand the node workflow in a basic way.

I am wondering whether it is possible to do the following, and if so, if it would be a good approach or an inefficient way to go about things.

I would like to be able to generate a large number of unique bombed out buildings. These buildings would all be lacking interiors and would be simple rectangles with regard to footprint. I would like to be able to expose parameters to do the following.

Number of building sections along the x axis. Say from a minimum of 3 up until 10 or so.

Same for the z axis

Same for the y axis (floors)

I would like to be able to turn windows on or off for each section and on each floor. However I would settle for window randomisation, or percent.

The bottom floor only should have a door and again ideally it should be possible to turn a door on for each section of the ground floor.

The windows and doors would all just be holes in the geometry.

I am a long way from being able to achieve this but having watch tutorials on this type of thing being done with so practice, and a little copying at first, I could get there.

Any resources on this process much appreciated.

It's the second part of the process I am most curious about. As these buildings are to be ruined, bombed / burned out, I would like to be able to easily give then unique, or at least unique feeling, damage. This could range from a few window hopes that have been additionally blow out, right down to almost entirely missing sides of the building. I would like this to involve broken walls with broken looking non straight edges.

I am not sure of the possible approaches to this. Two occur to me from what little I know.

1. I could use some simple geometry, just some rotated cubes say, that boolean the geometry and I could manually move this around quickly to create some reasonable results. I would need to do this in Houdini and them export each as an fbx. I could possibly do this as an hda allowing me to make these booleans in ue4 as I need them.

2. Use actual physics. I could set the building up in such a way I could actually simulate impacts and see how the buildings is destroyed. I assume I could either do this in Houdini and then export each interesting result as an fbx or make a hda and then do this in ue4, not at runtime, but in the editor.

3. I could create a process that moves around the perimeter of the buildings going up and down at random intervals within a defined percentage of the buildings height and booleaning or deleting the geometry etc.

4. Some other crazy magic I understand even less.

Finally, Ideally the collision would be done procedurally as well with openings such as windows, doors, destroyed areas etc having no collisions and all wall sections having collisions.

I am aware there is plenty here, so even partial tips, tutorial links, letting me know some of my suggested options are not options, or are technically options but I'll advised ones, would be great.

Thanks

Take a look at the Labs Building Generator [www.sidefx.com]

Brilliant. Thank you.