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Houdini Engine for Unity » Upgrading the Houdini Engine Unity plugin for latest tech...
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- arkaen
- 13 posts
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You'll have to look for the most recent branches and check what daily build is indicated by the naming convention, FYI, forgot to mention this ... I'll merge/squish it down to the original `Houdini20` branch when I'm satisfied it's in good shape and ready.
Edited by arkaen - April 21, 2024 00:19:44
Houdini Engine for Unity » Upgrading the Houdini Engine Unity plugin for latest tech...
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- arkaen
- 13 posts
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The title pretty much explains what I am doing here ... I've forked the plugin and begun work on refactoring this thing, improving efficiency/performance and trying to resolve any bugs/issues I can find. I am very serious about building an ambitious game and I simply must have this plugin in tip-top shape, integrated with the latest Unity tech and following our proper, modern C# (at least as modern as Unity allows lol) standards and practices. I thought about this for a while, and I can either sit back and wait for someone else to get around to it or I can just start doing it ... I just don't know if SideFx has .NET/C#/Unity expertise under the roof and even if they do if those people can afford to spend time on this plugin ... much less how much of a priority it is for them or other users ... too many unanswerable questions, inestimable timelines, etc for me to sit and wait with crossed fingers, and I really need to get some stuff done!
The fork can be found here:
https://github.com/atcarter714/HoudiniEngineForUnity/ [github.com]
I encourage folks to try/test it out and please report bugs/issues with as much error-related information as possible (stack traces, error messages/logs, explanation of what you did, etc). I will need these clues to help get this thing whipped into shape! It's a very big plugin by most standards, difficult and time-consuming to debug and test ... and my "domestic situation" makes it difficult to do anything (single father with no help, no sitters, straight 24/7 duty, lol). And please keep in mind these are really new/experimental changes being made and you cannot rely on anything being "perfect" at the moment ... I'm literally bobbing and weaving daily builds and having to use some fancy dev-ops to keep it together. However, I am quite serious about it, and this sort of stuff happens to be right up my alley (e.g., low-level programming, interop, plugins/integrations, D3D, engines, etc) ... so, I may not be able to make specific predictions on when certain will be ready, but I can assure you I will make this thing better than I found it. Something major I'm looking at doing here is integration with ECS/Entities workflows and other new Unity tech, and lots of other, smaller features like proper OpenVDB volume support (already have basic version working) ... and I'm already had some good results in personal tests with creating entity data in Houdini and injecting it into Unity.
If there's anyone from SideFx who's in charge of this plugin/Unity-related stuff or is at least familiar with it then I'd really love to get in touch and have someone to bounce ideas/questions off of, as there's just a lot of stuff in there which I am not sure what the intention/reasoning behind it was. This first pass, I'm trying not to change the functionality/intent of the code so much as just update/clean it up to 2024 C#/Unity 6 standards, however I will be making some minor modifications to things where it makes sense. Thus far, I'm getting pretty good results/experience out of this fork with the improvements made thus far, and don't think I've broken anything lol
Regards,
Aaron
P.S. -- If you have questions, experience errors/bugs (yes, there will be some!), etc please let me know.
The fork can be found here:
https://github.com/atcarter714/HoudiniEngineForUnity/ [github.com]
I encourage folks to try/test it out and please report bugs/issues with as much error-related information as possible (stack traces, error messages/logs, explanation of what you did, etc). I will need these clues to help get this thing whipped into shape! It's a very big plugin by most standards, difficult and time-consuming to debug and test ... and my "domestic situation" makes it difficult to do anything (single father with no help, no sitters, straight 24/7 duty, lol). And please keep in mind these are really new/experimental changes being made and you cannot rely on anything being "perfect" at the moment ... I'm literally bobbing and weaving daily builds and having to use some fancy dev-ops to keep it together. However, I am quite serious about it, and this sort of stuff happens to be right up my alley (e.g., low-level programming, interop, plugins/integrations, D3D, engines, etc) ... so, I may not be able to make specific predictions on when certain will be ready, but I can assure you I will make this thing better than I found it. Something major I'm looking at doing here is integration with ECS/Entities workflows and other new Unity tech, and lots of other, smaller features like proper OpenVDB volume support (already have basic version working) ... and I'm already had some good results in personal tests with creating entity data in Houdini and injecting it into Unity.
If there's anyone from SideFx who's in charge of this plugin/Unity-related stuff or is at least familiar with it then I'd really love to get in touch and have someone to bounce ideas/questions off of, as there's just a lot of stuff in there which I am not sure what the intention/reasoning behind it was. This first pass, I'm trying not to change the functionality/intent of the code so much as just update/clean it up to 2024 C#/Unity 6 standards, however I will be making some minor modifications to things where it makes sense. Thus far, I'm getting pretty good results/experience out of this fork with the improvements made thus far, and don't think I've broken anything lol

Regards,
Aaron
P.S. -- If you have questions, experience errors/bugs (yes, there will be some!), etc please let me know.
Houdini Engine for Unity » How to fix tree scatter bug in Houdini Engine 6.2.0
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- arkaen
- 13 posts
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This is probably what's causing my tree scattering hell in Unity 6 with the latest plugin ... I have done so much hunting and research and troubleshooting I forgot about this post. But now Jetbrains Rider is broken and won't find the "GenerateTerrainBuffers" function. What file is this in?
EDIT:
I found the method in question and made the suggested changes, but it still doesn't work. I added some log statements to try to get some info/feedback, but nothing ever shows in the console. Then I enabled the debugger and set breakpoints ... it never gets called. I tried experimenting with input nodes and heightfields and had all sorts of crazy bugs, like the scene view camera getting deleted and scene tab popping up in another window but not working and throwing 1,000 exceptions, or the input node's input fields disappearing ... there's apparently a lot of bad stuff happening ...
EDIT:
I found the method in question and made the suggested changes, but it still doesn't work. I added some log statements to try to get some info/feedback, but nothing ever shows in the console. Then I enabled the debugger and set breakpoints ... it never gets called. I tried experimenting with input nodes and heightfields and had all sorts of crazy bugs, like the scene view camera getting deleted and scene tab popping up in another window but not working and throwing 1,000 exceptions, or the input node's input fields disappearing ... there's apparently a lot of bad stuff happening ...
Edited by arkaen - April 1, 2024 02:35:30
Houdini Engine for Unity » What is the secret to getting tree instances to work?
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- arkaen
- 13 posts
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Ah, here's the other HDA to create tree prototypes ...
And this is what I am talking about with the HE Unity "input" system. I've always been vexed (pun intended lol) about the purpose of these ...
And this is what I am talking about with the HE Unity "input" system. I've always been vexed (pun intended lol) about the purpose of these ...
Edited by arkaen - April 1, 2024 00:20:31
Houdini Engine for Unity » What is the secret to getting tree instances to work?
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- arkaen
- 13 posts
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EDIT:
--------------------
Is the problem referenced in this post the reason for this "tree hell"? And if so, where is that function? I cannot find it because code analysis in Rider 2024 is broken on me now, lol, everything is breaking down lately ... :/
https://www.sidefx.com/forum/topic/95033 [www.sidefx.com]
I've been searching so far and wide I forgot I'd already seen that when I was having trouble with detail scattering before this ...
Update:
I found it and applied the change, but it failed to work. I also tried adding log statements and setting debug breakpoints which never got hit ... and strange things began to happen (camera/scene view failures).
--------------------
I took the time to make an HDA that will set up the attributes listed in the documentation to bind tree instances to points, and much to my dismay it simply didn't work ... the one I made to add tree prototypes does work, but no amount of trial, error and finesse will ever get trees to show up on the terrain. I'm pretty much out of ideas at this point. I've tried setting `pscale` and the tree instance width/height attributes to small and large values, tried crazy ranges of values for different attributes, tried packing/merging things in different combinations, tried flipping output indices, tried splitting and merging/combining the HF and tree points, tried tags and grouping, tried giving it a tile number, nothing I do works ... I'm starting to wonder if it's just broken or something? I looked through the forum history and found some discussions from the past where folks had trouble with trees and helpful people posted .hip scenes and HDA/OTL files with a solution (which apparently worked at that time according to the replies) but when I download and try them they also don't work ... it's starting to feel impossible, and has had me blocked for nearly a week now, unable to progress, and I'm getting pretty desperate. I've followed the documentation closely and inspected my geometry spreadsheet and attribute values a million times over ... either the plugin is broken or I am so exhausted with it that I've made an error invisible to my own eyes and brain, lol.
Attaching the last saved version of the SOP-level HDA I'm trying to make to this post ... I've even tried just directly doing it with an attribute wrangle and attribute create nodes (with and without groups/tags and other combinations of things) and simple can't get anything to happen. Prototypes do show up from my other HDA to create prototypes, but never any trees on the points. If I manually select a tree prototype in Unity and click with the brush tool that does put down trees, but that's neither procedural nor efficient and I'm not good at hand-editing stuff (had hand surgery and major nerve damage, so my hands are shaky lol).
The only thing I can think of, at this point, is maybe I'm using a fundamentally incorrect workflow or something ... but this has already run way over the allotted time I had for it and has proven to be a fatal blocker. That being said, I could really
use some more information and explanation about things like what that "GlobalNodes" subnet is even for and why when I add an "Input" in Unity and feed it a terrain it creates 3 nodes like:
- merge
- input_
- heightfield_input_input
Two of them just have an "object merge" node feeding a "null" and some kind of HAPI strings or something ... I know they're doing something important related to the way the plugin works, but it's never mentioned in any documentation and I've never been able to get an answer about their function and purpose. And I sorta need to know, because if I can ever get out of pre-production I'm going to need to dig into the plugin and add some extensions. Anyhow, the main thing is just getting these trees to spawn properly at this point, it's thwarted me for far too long ... :-(
--------------------
Is the problem referenced in this post the reason for this "tree hell"? And if so, where is that function? I cannot find it because code analysis in Rider 2024 is broken on me now, lol, everything is breaking down lately ... :/
https://www.sidefx.com/forum/topic/95033 [www.sidefx.com]
I've been searching so far and wide I forgot I'd already seen that when I was having trouble with detail scattering before this ...
Update:
I found it and applied the change, but it failed to work. I also tried adding log statements and setting debug breakpoints which never got hit ... and strange things began to happen (camera/scene view failures).
--------------------
I took the time to make an HDA that will set up the attributes listed in the documentation to bind tree instances to points, and much to my dismay it simply didn't work ... the one I made to add tree prototypes does work, but no amount of trial, error and finesse will ever get trees to show up on the terrain. I'm pretty much out of ideas at this point. I've tried setting `pscale` and the tree instance width/height attributes to small and large values, tried crazy ranges of values for different attributes, tried packing/merging things in different combinations, tried flipping output indices, tried splitting and merging/combining the HF and tree points, tried tags and grouping, tried giving it a tile number, nothing I do works ... I'm starting to wonder if it's just broken or something? I looked through the forum history and found some discussions from the past where folks had trouble with trees and helpful people posted .hip scenes and HDA/OTL files with a solution (which apparently worked at that time according to the replies) but when I download and try them they also don't work ... it's starting to feel impossible, and has had me blocked for nearly a week now, unable to progress, and I'm getting pretty desperate. I've followed the documentation closely and inspected my geometry spreadsheet and attribute values a million times over ... either the plugin is broken or I am so exhausted with it that I've made an error invisible to my own eyes and brain, lol.
Attaching the last saved version of the SOP-level HDA I'm trying to make to this post ... I've even tried just directly doing it with an attribute wrangle and attribute create nodes (with and without groups/tags and other combinations of things) and simple can't get anything to happen. Prototypes do show up from my other HDA to create prototypes, but never any trees on the points. If I manually select a tree prototype in Unity and click with the brush tool that does put down trees, but that's neither procedural nor efficient and I'm not good at hand-editing stuff (had hand surgery and major nerve damage, so my hands are shaky lol).
The only thing I can think of, at this point, is maybe I'm using a fundamentally incorrect workflow or something ... but this has already run way over the allotted time I had for it and has proven to be a fatal blocker. That being said, I could really
use some more information and explanation about things like what that "GlobalNodes" subnet is even for and why when I add an "Input" in Unity and feed it a terrain it creates 3 nodes like:
- merge
- input_
- heightfield_input_input
Two of them just have an "object merge" node feeding a "null" and some kind of HAPI strings or something ... I know they're doing something important related to the way the plugin works, but it's never mentioned in any documentation and I've never been able to get an answer about their function and purpose. And I sorta need to know, because if I can ever get out of pre-production I'm going to need to dig into the plugin and add some extensions. Anyhow, the main thing is just getting these trees to spawn properly at this point, it's thwarted me for far too long ... :-(
Edited by arkaen - April 1, 2024 16:02:46
Houdini Engine for Unity » When in session sync, I can't undo the edits in Houdini
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- arkaen
- 13 posts
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Had this problem since day 1, and have been frustrated by it. Wasn't sure if it was intentionally disabled or not. But, in any case, working without an "undo" feature is VERY difficult. There's quite a few issues with the Unity plugin and it just badly needs some maintenance and updating, especially with Unity 6 looming ... I'd be willing to help, and I think it'd be great if all of us that use Unity would pitch in (even with testing/reporting if you're no good at programming) and whip this thing into respectable shape ... the gods know I need it to work smoothly and run stable, I'm "all in" on building with Houdini + Unity and survival is at stake lol
Houdini Engine for Unity » How to fix tree scatter bug in Houdini Engine 6.2.0
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- arkaen
- 13 posts
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Are you also having issues with grass/details? I cannot for the life of me get grass to appear on the terrain ... it creates prototypes in the inspector properly, and you can select one and manually paint it on the terrain just fine. But no amount of finesse seems to get it to work from Houdini. If I have to hand paint grass on every piece of terrain (which I'm not so good at, and have a shaky hand from reconstructive surgery) then it sort of kills my workflow and tanks my game concept ... also experiencing a LOT of instability and crashes of both editors, freezes/deadlocks, etc. I think the plugin is just badly in need of maintenance and modernization and Unreal has basically been getting 100% of the attention (Unity just sort of casually mentioned in passing now and again) ... 
If SideFx is willing to give the Unity plugin some love and care, I will help out and contribute ...

If SideFx is willing to give the Unity plugin some love and care, I will help out and contribute ...
Rigging » Errrors painting skin weights (jointcapturepaint)
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- arkaen
- 13 posts
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In .653 I reloaded the .hip scene file and this time no error message boxes and the paint brush appeared on the first try, but still got a hole cut in my character's hand and trying to smooth joint weights of finger cut even more faces out lol ... but this scene may be (and probably is) corrupted at this point so I need to retry it fresh and have to forfeit those dull hours of hard and tedious work 
I'll post updates on how things go re-trying the process in the latest prod (.653)

I'll post updates on how things go re-trying the process in the latest prod (.653)
Rigging » Errrors painting skin weights (jointcapturepaint)
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- arkaen
- 13 posts
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kodraI'm getting it in 20.0.650 but I will try updating to latest prod build and see what happens ... fingers crossed!
I've reported this bug quite a while ago and they said it was fixed in Houdini 20.0.653.
Rigging » Errrors painting skin weights (jointcapturepaint)
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- arkaen
- 13 posts
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edward
Can you try the latest production build? If it's still reproducing there, then please log a bug with a sample hip file along with steps to reproduce using the sample hip file: https://www.sidefx.com/bugs/#/create/ [www.sidefx.com]
Yes, I will! I've found even more trouble, like it tears holes in the mesh also sometimes :S
Rigging » Errrors painting skin weights (jointcapturepaint)
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- arkaen
- 13 posts
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(EDIT: Relocating the rigpose node didn't help, same thing happened ...)
Is the problem the location/order of the `rigpose` node?

Should it be after the paint node? If so, maybe it was my fault all along :S
Is the problem the location/order of the `rigpose` node?

Should it be after the paint node? If so, maybe it was my fault all along :S
Edited by arkaen - March 17, 2024 23:06:40
Rigging » Errrors painting skin weights (jointcapturepaint)
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- arkaen
- 13 posts
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For some reason, I cannot use the `jointcapturepaint` node tools without getting bombarded with error messages and erratic behaviors ... the error message pops up immediately after clicking the node or the handles button.

If you hit "OK", another one follows:
Sometimes that is followed by a much simpler error message box exclaiming a Python script error.
After dismissing the error messages, the paintbrush will often show up, but it behaves wildly. It's prone to disappear and won't come back unless I hold alt and zoom in and then out (super weird). Crazy stuff also starts happening to the rig/skin:

Nothing special about the node network either ... this seems to occur with every character I've tried, every scene, even a fresh one with 3rd party models downloaded from online and directly wiring things up.
Painting weights is really difficult due to these erratic behaviors. It doesn't paint correctly. It seems to keep switching to "Smooth" operation of its own volition, and using Ctrl/Shift modifier keys doesn't have consistent behavior. Sometimes it will erase, sometimes smooth, I have no clue what's going on.
Would really appreciate some help with this. I have always hated painted skin weights and had bad experiences with it in every software. At least this has been the least bad experience, despite the crazy buggery. But still far from enjoyable or pleasant, haha. It's honestly a major game dev show-stopper :-(
Before I make an official bug report about this, I wanted to check and make sure that I am not doing something wrong or overlooking something obvious, and see if anyone knows a work-around or alternative so I can get this work done!
Regards,
Aaron
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "C:\PROGRA~1/SIDEEF~1/HOUDIN~1.590/houdini/python3.10libs\hudinfohandler.py", line 268, in onHudSetTemplate
hud.setTemplate(kwargs)
File "C:\PROGRA~1/SIDEEF~1/HOUDIN~1.590/houdini/python3.10libs\hudinfohandler.py", line 120, in setTemplate
self._hud.toolInfo().setTemplate(hud_template)
File "C:\PROGRA~1/SIDEEF~1/HOUDIN~1.590/houdini/python3.10libs\hutil\qt\data\panels.py", line 823, in setTemplate
self.resolveHotkeys()
File "C:\PROGRA~1/SIDEEF~1/HOUDIN~1.590/houdini/python3.10libs\hutil\qt\data\panels.py", line 857, in resolveHotkeys
self._scene_viewer.hotkeyAssignments(symlist)
File "C:\PROGRA~1/SIDEEF~1/HOUDIN~1.590/houdini/python3.10libs\hou.py", line 80628, in hotkeyAssignments
return _hou.SceneViewer_hotkeyAssignments(self, hotkey_symbols)
ValueError: Invalid hotkey symbol (h.pane.gview.radial)

If you hit "OK", another one follows:
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "C:\PROGRA~1/SIDEEF~1/HOUDIN~1.590/houdini/python3.10libs\viewerstate\utils.py", line 1054, in wrapper
return func(*args, **kwargs)
File "C:\PROGRA~1/SIDEEF~1/HOUDIN~1.590/houdini/python3.10libs\viewerstate\interface.py", line 231, in onEnter
state.onEnter(kwargs)
File "C:\PROGRA~1/SIDEEF~1/HOUDIN~1.590/packages/kinefx/viewer_states\kinefx__jointcapturepaint.py", line 1306, in onEnter
self.scene_viewer.hudInfo(template=hud_template)
File "C:\PROGRA~1/SIDEEF~1/HOUDIN~1.590/houdini/python3.10libs\houpythonportion\SceneViewer.py", line 98, in hudInfo
self._hudInfo(show=show, terminate=terminate, update_texture=update_texture, hud_state=state, hud_template=template,
File "C:\PROGRA~1/SIDEEF~1/HOUDIN~1.590/houdini/python3.10libs\hou.py", line 81862, in _hudInfo
return _hou.SceneViewer__hudInfo(self, *args, **kwargs)
hou.OperationFailed: The attempted operation failed.
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "C:\PROGRA~1/SIDEEF~1/HOUDIN~1.590/houdini/python3.10libs\hudinfohandler.py", line 268, in onHudSetTemplate
hud.setTemplate(kwargs)
File "C:\PROGRA~1/SIDEEF~1/HOUDIN~1.590/houdini/python3.10libs\hudinfohandler.py", line 120, in setTemplate
self._hud.toolInfo().setTemplate(hud_template)
File "C:\PROGRA~1/SIDEEF~1/HOUDIN~1.590/houdini/python3.10libs\hutil\qt\data\panels.py", line 823, in setTemplate
self.resolveHotkeys()
File "C:\PROGRA~1/SIDEEF~1/HOUDIN~1.590/houdini/python3.10libs\hutil\qt\data\panels.py", line 857, in resolveHotkeys
self._scene_viewer.hotkeyAssignments(symlist)
File "C:\PROGRA~1/SIDEEF~1/HOUDIN~1.590/houdini/python3.10libs\hou.py", line 80628, in hotkeyAssignments
return _hou.SceneViewer_hotkeyAssignments(self, hotkey_symbols)
ValueError: Invalid hotkey symbol (h.pane.gview.radial)
Sometimes that is followed by a much simpler error message box exclaiming a Python script error.
After dismissing the error messages, the paintbrush will often show up, but it behaves wildly. It's prone to disappear and won't come back unless I hold alt and zoom in and then out (super weird). Crazy stuff also starts happening to the rig/skin:

Nothing special about the node network either ... this seems to occur with every character I've tried, every scene, even a fresh one with 3rd party models downloaded from online and directly wiring things up.
Painting weights is really difficult due to these erratic behaviors. It doesn't paint correctly. It seems to keep switching to "Smooth" operation of its own volition, and using Ctrl/Shift modifier keys doesn't have consistent behavior. Sometimes it will erase, sometimes smooth, I have no clue what's going on.
Would really appreciate some help with this. I have always hated painted skin weights and had bad experiences with it in every software. At least this has been the least bad experience, despite the crazy buggery. But still far from enjoyable or pleasant, haha. It's honestly a major game dev show-stopper :-(
Before I make an official bug report about this, I wanted to check and make sure that I am not doing something wrong or overlooking something obvious, and see if anyone knows a work-around or alternative so I can get this work done!
Regards,
Aaron
Edited by arkaen - March 17, 2024 23:02:35
Houdini Lounge » Does the correct shader (for Unity) already exist?
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- arkaen
- 13 posts
- Offline
NOTE -- I've found these so far ...
https://github.com/sideeffects/SideFXLabs/tree/Development/unity/shaders [github.com]
https://github.com/sideeffects/GameDevelopmentToolset/tree/Development/unity [github.com]
I think there are a couple other things I found, too ... but it goes back to the problem of not knowing what is intended to be used for what, or where the up-to-date docs are on this stuff, and it's been a bit hard to keep track of this and hunt for stuff while following learning paths and actually making stuff in Houdini, haha.
So if anyone can put an ol' hound on the scent here, I'd definitely appreciate it a lot and take off!
https://github.com/sideeffects/SideFXLabs/tree/Development/unity/shaders [github.com]
https://github.com/sideeffects/GameDevelopmentToolset/tree/Development/unity [github.com]
I think there are a couple other things I found, too ... but it goes back to the problem of not knowing what is intended to be used for what, or where the up-to-date docs are on this stuff, and it's been a bit hard to keep track of this and hunt for stuff while following learning paths and actually making stuff in Houdini, haha.
So if anyone can put an ol' hound on the scent here, I'd definitely appreciate it a lot and take off!

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