Hello!
As the title suggest, I am unable to import .otl files into my UE 4.10.4 project. I have tried placing the .otl file in my content folder for my project but the asset doesn't show up in the engine folder view.
I have the latest version of Houdini and have tried re-installing both the houdini apprentice and houdini engine for unreal.
Is this a known issue with a possible solution?
Thank you!
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Houdini Engine for Unreal » UE 4.10.4 not recognizing .otl file extensions
- Maxime Bruneau-lavoie
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Houdini Learning Materials » pop sop dop? what do these mean?
- Maxime Bruneau-lavoie
- 15 posts
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Hey there! I'm new to houdini as well, and it's true that it all gets very confusing at first but you have to give yourself some time. Houdini is notoriously hard to wrap your head around.
My best suggestion is that you should take notes. For example you should write down the definition for VOP, SOP, DOP, etc. What “$” variables are, etc. All of that is helping me a lot. You should also check out this guy for tutorials:
https://vimeo.com/rohandalvi/videos [vimeo.com]
Hope this helps.
My best suggestion is that you should take notes. For example you should write down the definition for VOP, SOP, DOP, etc. What “$” variables are, etc. All of that is helping me a lot. You should also check out this guy for tutorials:
https://vimeo.com/rohandalvi/videos [vimeo.com]
Hope this helps.
Houdini Learning Materials » Why is houdini generating so many vertices on my sphere?
- Maxime Bruneau-lavoie
- 15 posts
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sidenimjay
I stay out of Maya as much as possible, where are you seeing that the vertex count is lower than Houdini?
Ignore that, I did another test today and simply made a cube in both maya and houdini and they both came out with the same amount of vertices. So it was probably a dumb mistake on my part when I was trying with different meshes. This makes a lot more sense now :p
Houdini Learning Materials » Why is houdini generating so many vertices on my sphere?
- Maxime Bruneau-lavoie
- 15 posts
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sidenimjay
I believe in your maya example, there are the same number of vertices, that actually live on top of one another, which is why you see 1 vert, but 3 normals
In houdini, the verts also live on top of one another, but the display is shown such that you can actually see that there are 3 vertices at the corners rather than obscuring the fact as is done in the maya viewport
That's what I assumed at first, but that doesn't explain why the actual vertex count is higher in Houdini compared to Maya. If Maya simply made these vertices invisible in the viewport because they're on top of each other, the vertex count would be equal.
Houdini Learning Materials » Why is houdini generating so many vertices on my sphere?
- Maxime Bruneau-lavoie
- 15 posts
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twodMaxime Bruneau-lavoie
Could you explain how being able to add UVs and normals on vertices can be useful? I don't understand what you mean by “allowing for discontinuities between quads” and it's hard to visualize what having cusps in the mesh quads looks like.
Sure. Take for example a cube. When you place a Box SOP down in the viewport, it looks very oddly shaded because the normals are computed on the points themselves (of which there are 8 ). This is because it's putting one normal at each point which is shared by all 3 vertices, and it gives the box a “smooth shaded” look.
If you dive inside the box object and switch “Add Vertex Normals” on, you'll see it now looks like a proper cube. This is because all the normals are now on the vertices (4/face) and the normals are unique to each face, and they're all pointing in the same direction.
Now, if you turn on “Display Normals” on the right viewport toolbar (sort of looks like a pizza cutter icon halfway down), you can see the diffference in the normals when you toggle “Add Vertex Normals” on and off. There will be 24 vertex normals drawn when it's on, and 8 point normals when it's off.
UVs can also be treated the same way - with vertex UVs, you can have a fully connected mesh with no “double points” and a clean separation between two UV islands - say, where the clothes and skin meet on a character. One polygon edge will have one set of vertex UVs, and the other polygon that shares that edge will have a different set of vertex UVs, making this clean texture separation possible.
As for exporting to UE4, I don't know much about that You may want to post that question on the Unreal Engine forum below for the Engine folks to answer.
Hey twod thank you for the explanation. I can clearly see the difference in shading with the vertex normals added so that does answer my initial question. That got me curious so I looked at how the vertex normals for a cube in Maya were setup, and they do indeed have 4 vertices per face as well. But why is it that Houdini needs to have a vertex for each normal, whereas Maya has the normals shared by a single vertex and obtains the same result?
Houdini:
http://imgur.com/0fZS8Nd [imgur.com]
Maya:
http://imgur.com/l6nQGfp [imgur.com]
So going from that example alone, this doesn't answer the question of why have so many more vertices. That example does explain why you need those extra normals but it doesn't explain why you need to have a vertex for each normal instead of having one vertex for 3 normals like Maya does for example.
Houdini Learning Materials » Why is houdini generating so many vertices on my sphere?
- Maxime Bruneau-lavoie
- 15 posts
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Thank you for this graphic goldleaf, this cleared up some of my confusion about attributes in general as well.
The thing that really confused me the most is when I imported this mesh inside of UE4 and made the engine display all of the vertices. The extra 3 vertices were right on top of each other at the polygons intersections so they were kind of useless in my case. Is there a way to make Houdini treat vertices more like points when exporting? Or maybe a way to retrieve the position of the points inside UE4? Is the point position information even available once imported in UE4?
Could you explain how being able to add UVs and normals on vertices can be useful? I don't understand what you mean by “allowing for discontinuities between quads” and it's hard to visualize what having cusps in the mesh quads looks like. :p
Sorry if this is a lot of questions all at once, thanks for all the information so far everybody.
twod
A Vertex in Houdini is unique to a polygon. A Point can be shared between adjacent polygons. They allow for different frequencies of attributes on the geometry, so that you can put uvs or normals on vertices (allowing for discontinuities between quads, like cusps) but still have a connected mesh.
The sphere above has a single point in the middle of those vertex clusters, shared by all 4 quads. If you turn on point display (Display Options, Markers, Point Markers) you'll see a blue dot in the middle representing the point.
The thing that really confused me the most is when I imported this mesh inside of UE4 and made the engine display all of the vertices. The extra 3 vertices were right on top of each other at the polygons intersections so they were kind of useless in my case. Is there a way to make Houdini treat vertices more like points when exporting? Or maybe a way to retrieve the position of the points inside UE4? Is the point position information even available once imported in UE4?
Could you explain how being able to add UVs and normals on vertices can be useful? I don't understand what you mean by “allowing for discontinuities between quads” and it's hard to visualize what having cusps in the mesh quads looks like. :p
Sorry if this is a lot of questions all at once, thanks for all the information so far everybody.
Houdini Engine for Unreal » Is it possible to import an animated geometry into UE4?
- Maxime Bruneau-lavoie
- 15 posts
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I was actually going to follow your destruction tutorial before I even thought about this project :p So I'll definitely be following your tutorial very closely including the python part. I am new to Houdini so this is probably going to teach me a lot.
I was going to animate it in UE4 using multiple splines in a spiral shape and move the emitter along the spline but it's not nearly as interesting as doing it the way you explained it in houdini, so I would love to see how you'd do this using the actual Fibonacci sequence :p
I was going to animate it in UE4 using multiple splines in a spiral shape and move the emitter along the spline but it's not nearly as interesting as doing it the way you explained it in houdini, so I would love to see how you'd do this using the actual Fibonacci sequence :p
Houdini Learning Materials » Why is houdini generating so many vertices on my sphere?
- Maxime Bruneau-lavoie
- 15 posts
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Hello!
I was simply wondering why is Houdini generating so many vertices? Normally when I would create a similar mesh in Maya, I obtain almost 4 times less vertices and they act more like points do in Houdini. So my question is basically why does Houdini seperate points and vertices as different things, and how could I go about having vertices that are positioned more like points?
I was simply wondering why is Houdini generating so many vertices? Normally when I would create a similar mesh in Maya, I obtain almost 4 times less vertices and they act more like points do in Houdini. So my question is basically why does Houdini seperate points and vertices as different things, and how could I go about having vertices that are positioned more like points?
Houdini Learning Materials » How to create flipbook textures of simulations in Houdini?
- Maxime Bruneau-lavoie
- 15 posts
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I ended up figuring it out with some more research. If anyone else is wondering how to do this, you should check out this tutorial:
https://vimeo.com/79588680 [vimeo.com]
I might make my own version of this tutorial to make the whole process more newbie friendly as well.
https://vimeo.com/79588680 [vimeo.com]
I might make my own version of this tutorial to make the whole process more newbie friendly as well.
Houdini Learning Materials » How to create flipbook textures of simulations in Houdini?
- Maxime Bruneau-lavoie
- 15 posts
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Hey again,
I have created a very simple PyroFX sim, but I am having difficulties figuring out how to use the Mosaic node to create an 8x8 sprite sheet. I have messed around a lot and I tried making a COPnet node and putting a Mosaic node inside of it, but I can't figure out how to layout the first 16 frames of my sim in a mosaic and render the final image.
Can somebody give me some general direction on how to do this? I heard it's supposed to be simple but I'm very new to Houdini.
Thank you.
I have created a very simple PyroFX sim, but I am having difficulties figuring out how to use the Mosaic node to create an 8x8 sprite sheet. I have messed around a lot and I tried making a COPnet node and putting a Mosaic node inside of it, but I can't figure out how to layout the first 16 frames of my sim in a mosaic and render the final image.
Can somebody give me some general direction on how to do this? I heard it's supposed to be simple but I'm very new to Houdini.
Thank you.
Houdini Engine for Unreal » Is it possible to import an animated geometry into UE4?
- Maxime Bruneau-lavoie
- 15 posts
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okay I see what you're saying about Houdini having to cook the animation in the background. So that's not really an option in my case.
The only way I can think of to piece this into an animation inside UE4 would be to bake these meshes individually as you say, then hide and reveal them one by one every frame inside UE4. Kind of like a flipbook, but with meshes.
I'd really like to try this. I think can figure out how to create the mesh and animate it on my own, but how would I go about baking let's say 10 frames worth of meshes one by one so I end up with 10 different meshes?
The only way I can think of to piece this into an animation inside UE4 would be to bake these meshes individually as you say, then hide and reveal them one by one every frame inside UE4. Kind of like a flipbook, but with meshes.
I'd really like to try this. I think can figure out how to create the mesh and animate it on my own, but how would I go about baking let's say 10 frames worth of meshes one by one so I end up with 10 different meshes?
Houdini Engine for Unreal » Is it possible to import an animated geometry into UE4?
- Maxime Bruneau-lavoie
- 15 posts
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Hello!
I apologize if this is an overly basic question, but I was wondering what would be the most straightforward way to import an animation such as this one into UE4:
https://vimeo.com/116709749 [vimeo.com]
Is it possible to create something like this in Houdini, and then directly import it into UE4, fully animated, and apply materials on top of it?
Thank you!
I apologize if this is an overly basic question, but I was wondering what would be the most straightforward way to import an animation such as this one into UE4:
https://vimeo.com/116709749 [vimeo.com]
Is it possible to create something like this in Houdini, and then directly import it into UE4, fully animated, and apply materials on top of it?
Thank you!
Houdini Learning Materials » How to create flow maps inside of Houdini?
- Maxime Bruneau-lavoie
- 15 posts
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Hello everyone!
I am curious to know if there are currently tutorials or resources out there that could explain the process of creating flow maps inside of Houdini, the kinds of flow map that are presented in this video at 8:57 minutes in
https://www.sidefx.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=3085&Itemid=419 [sidefx.com]
I have created similar flow map textures inside of Maya before, by using 2D fluid containers to distort a texture map gradient but I am not sure where to start in Houdini in order to create what's shown in the video.
Thanks in advance!
I am curious to know if there are currently tutorials or resources out there that could explain the process of creating flow maps inside of Houdini, the kinds of flow map that are presented in this video at 8:57 minutes in
https://www.sidefx.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=3085&Itemid=419 [sidefx.com]
I have created similar flow map textures inside of Maya before, by using 2D fluid containers to distort a texture map gradient but I am not sure where to start in Houdini in order to create what's shown in the video.
Thanks in advance!
Houdini Learning Materials » How to create flipbook textures of simulations in Houdini?
- Maxime Bruneau-lavoie
- 15 posts
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Thanks Guillaume, it looks like the mosaic composite node is what I need, it also happens to show up in the presenters graph setup so it's pretty clear that's what I need to use!
Houdini Learning Materials » How to create flipbook textures of simulations in Houdini?
- Maxime Bruneau-lavoie
- 15 posts
- Offline
Hello!
Right now I am trying to figure out how to create a flipbook texture to then animate inside of UE4. I know how to animate the texture itself as I have made flipbook textures in the past, but I am struggling to find tutorials on how to do this in Houdini.
Any help is appreciated.
Right now I am trying to figure out how to create a flipbook texture to then animate inside of UE4. I know how to animate the texture itself as I have made flipbook textures in the past, but I am struggling to find tutorials on how to do this in Houdini.
Any help is appreciated.
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