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News » GameDev Tools Updates

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mikelyndon-sesi
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12 October 2018
New Tools
  • Sweep Geometry SOP - Allows you to sweep a piece of geo through a curve, similar to a path deform or curve brush.
  • MapBox SOP - Allows for downloading satellite color, elevation and OSM data that is lined up. (We’ll release a tutorial soon. Promise.)
  • Flowmap Visualize - This is a wrapper around a GLSL shader to preview your flowmaps in the viewport.
  • Turntable SOP - Option to rotate around the centre and defaults to rotate clockwise.

Updates
  • RBD to FBX added support for custom scale attribute. User can now override the scale of each packed primitive with a specified point attribute. (eg. pscale) This means the user no longer needs to do transform matrix multiplications themselves.
  • RBD to FBX is now more robust. The tool will now filter out any non-packed geometry preventing errors on export. The tool will now also create a name attribute if it is missing on the geo, which also prevents that error from happening again. Also added the functionality to have the tool create a new name attribute as override. (User specifies prefix on UI)
  • Added Detail Mesh material support. Tool will now properly handle materials assigned to the mesh texture. Also added the option to override the seam material used. Tool will now also automatically adjust tiles that are bigger than a size of 1 on X and Z axis. (Still required to have 1:1 ratio)
  • Added Export of Quad with matching UVs for Octahedron Impostor.
  • Updating OSM Buildings to handle footprints that have been projected onto sloped terrains
  • Flowmap Obstacle 2.0 - Completely redesigned for speed.
  • Flowmap 2.0 - Added different initialization methods, including a new slope method which will follow the direction of your mesh
  • RBD Fracture preserves attributes - RBD Fracture will now add N only if N doesn't already exist.
    Absolute and relative path now works for inside material.
    Removed transfer of attributes when packing geo.
    Removed nodes that unnecessarily effected N.
  • Updating RBD portion of the VAT to regenerate the orient attribute in case we have animated data present.
  • Disc Mesh Generator - changed how uvs are generated. UVs were being generated using arc length spline. Changed the method to use curveu and a wrangle for backward compatibility.
  • Changing the Flow map obstacle to make the influence a bit more natural by changing the way the 2 opposing velocities are combines.
  • VAT: Updated parameter names to work in Houdini 17. Some parameter names lost their connection when the HDA was run in Houdini 17. This have been resolved.

Bug Fixes
  • VAT Fluids: Updated colour export to use correct point count. The colour export logic didn't match how normals or position were being calculated in the copnet. This has been resolved.
  • Games Baker - If the uv cage object path is invalid the resulting textures have artifacts.
    Changed the expression that completes the path in the bake texture ROP so that if the user hasn't added a uv cage object, the path is left blank.
  • Fixed Gameres normals for generated lowpoly. (baking mode) Bake will not use hard edges anymore.
  • Fix for handling OSM data that doesn’t include map level size information.
  • Fixed Error in the lod_create demoscene due to changes in the RBD>FBX tool.
  • Octahedron Impostor Full-Sphere bugfix. Corners points on atlas had minor rotation offset. Now perfectly aligned.
  • Fixed name bug in RBD>FBX where it would fail when you had both point and prim name attribute.
  • Bugfix on OSM Buildings and OSM Import where building parts weren't loading properly.
  • Individual light channels were returning black for texture sheets ROP. An incorrect colour operation was negating the light channel renders causing the packed comp to return black images for Y_Point_Down_Direct, etc. This has been fixed.
  • Fixed Skinningconverter trying to delete the file node inside geometry container. Would break in H17.
Edited by mikelyndon-sesi - Oct. 12, 2018 15:46:17
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Houdini for Realtime » Vertex Animation Tool is not working in Houdini 17

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mikelyndon-sesi
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I've just submitted a fix. Some of the parameter names lost their connection when using the HDA in 17.

Mike
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Houdini for Realtime » Vertex Animation Textures does not work after applying GameDev Destruction Cleanup node.

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mikelyndon-sesi
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Can you provide a hip file? Or more information?

Mike
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News » GameDev Tools Updates

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mikelyndon-sesi
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3 September 2018
New Tools

Updates
  • Lens Shaders Tutorial - If you want to learn more about lens shaders, we have a tutorial [www.sidefx.com] for that. We use them for the impostor ROP.
  • Game Development Updating can now be disabled in pipelines by using the GAMEDEVTOOLSET_NOINSTALL_MESSAGE environment variable. The updater will display the given string as an error message for example: “The GameDev Toolset is disabled in our pipeline, please message John@company if you'd like it installed”. This allows for studios to provide a central distribution for the tools that can't be overridden by the artists.
  • Changed defaults on SineWave SOP.
  • Added Gamma parameter on Color Adjustment SOP.
  • Removing the updater.shelf from the toolset so the built-in Houdini one is always respected

Bug Fixes
  • Small fix on QuickMat where the metallic property wasn't hooked up.
  • Fix on Group By Attribute SOP to handle material attributes properly.
  • Fix on RBD To FBX where it wouldn't respect the start/end times and always look at the play bar for the range.
  • Fixed Impostor Demoscene error which would appear when opening the hipfile
  • Fixed VoxelMesh HDA scaling issue. Scaling now matches input geo.
Edited by mikelyndon-sesi - Sept. 4, 2018 23:00:41
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News » GameDev Tools Updates

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mikelyndon-sesi
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19 August 2018
New Tools
Color Adjustment SOP - Control brightness, contrast, and saturation of Cd.
Color Blend SOP - Blend Cd from 2 inputs.
Color Gradient SOP - Output Cd gradient based on axis.
Sine Wave SOP - Drive P with a sine wave.

Updates
  • Marmoset ROP - Improved how fast exporting happens for TGA and PNG textures. Added tint and flip normal Y.
  • Fixed the sample scene for the simple baker.
  • OSM Import - Added latitude and longitude point attribute.
  • Vertex Animation Textures - New demo scene for fluid export.

Bug Fixes
  • Marmoset ROP - Fixed a bug where some textures would not properly get exported in Marmoset ROP.
  • Fixed a bug on cages for simple baker and games baker.
  • Vertex Animation Textures - There was an issue if the number of input polygons was less than the target polycount, the data in the textures would be misaligned.
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News » GameDev Tools Updates

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mikelyndon-sesi
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7 August 2018
New Tools
Marmoset Toolbag ROP - This tool allows for rendering geometry and shaders from Houdini to the .mview format. You can find more info at the dedicated Marmoset Toolbag ROP [www.sidefx.com] thread.
QuickMat 2.0 - Now with multiple material support, including the ability to create custom material names. Existing setups will still use the previous version of the node.

Updates
  • We've added analytics to the GameDev nodes. As the toolset grows we want to focus on the tools that matter to you. This is one way for us to make better decisions. For more info on anonymous usage, including how to disable it, please see https://www.sidefx.com/legal/houdini-anonymous-usage-statistics [www.sidefx.com]
  • Impostor ROP can now create octahedral impostors. Video coming soon.
  • Refactored Destruction Cleanup. Improved overall performance.
  • Vertex Animation Textures : Fluids - If the input mesh is made up of separated primitives the polyreduce would generate cracks in the geo. There's a new toggle for fluid export to fix this.
    There's also new logic to calculate the texture size which should be more accurate.
  • Vertex Animation Textures - Sprites now export Alpha.
  • Adding UV Attribute to the AutoUV SOP and Merge Small Islands SOP.
  • Hooking up Color Parameter to the Edge Group to Curve SOP.

Bug Fixes
  • Impostor ROP now works with relative paths.
  • When installing the game dev tools, some of the dialogs didn’t use Houdini's Qt theme and inherit the system default.
  • Fixing issue where the RBD to FBX tool wouldn't export modifications.
  • Fixed Games Baker P Channel output. Returned grey normalized 0-1 UV space instead of actual world position.
  • Changed PivotPainter to support correct up orientation for both per-object & hierarchical basis generation.
  • Animation Impostors - Fixed an issue where the camera was rendering the wrong file path.
  • Animation Impostors - Camera bounds are now fixed taking the entire animation into account.
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Houdini Engine for UE4 » No Alpha when outputting sprite vertex animation texures

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mikelyndon-sesi
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I've made the change. You should see it in tomorrow's daily build. The stepping of the alpha could be your image type but unlikely or your compression setting in UE4. It's difficult to say without more info.
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Houdini for Realtime » Animation Impostor Issues

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mikelyndon-sesi
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Hi.

Thanks for catching these issues. We've made changes to the HDA's to fix the first issue. The camera was pointing to the wrong image_sequence path.

The camera bounds are now fixed. We take the whole animations bounding box into account and set the camera based on that.

I've added 3 and 4 as a bug and RFE to the backlog.

Mike.
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Houdini Engine for UE4 » Vertex Animation Crashing UE4

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mikelyndon-sesi
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I've tested copy and pasting the material code in 4.19 and 4.20 without any problems. What version of UE4 are you running?
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Houdini for Realtime » Houdini and Unreal Niagara

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mikelyndon-sesi
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Have you looked at this thread? https://www.sidefx.com/forum/topic/56573/ [www.sidefx.com]
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Houdini for Realtime » Houdini Data Interface for UE4's Niagara

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mikelyndon-sesi
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Hi folks. The production build of 4.20 is now out. There were a couple of changes that didn't make it into the build. If you set your emitters to local space you need to make changes to 3 modules:
  • HandleSpawnedHoudiniParticles
  • HandleSpawnedHoudiniParticlesByType
  • UpdatePosFromHoudiniArray
We'll add these changes as soon as we can.
HandleSpawnedHoudiniParticles

HandleSpawnedHoudiniParticlesByType

UpdatePosFromHoudiniArray
Edited by mikelyndon-sesi - July 20, 2018 13:22:56
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News » GameDev Tools Updates

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mikelyndon-sesi
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20 July 2018
It's been a relatively quiet fortnight with most of the team travelling.
Updates
  • UE4 4.20 has been released which includes the Houdini Niagara data interface. There are a couple of changes related to local space or world space emitters that didn't make it in. We'll add more details on the Niagara thread [www.sidefx.com].
  • The Surface Offset parm has been added back to the Physics Painter.

Bug Fixes
  • Packed normals for the soft export option of the vertex animation texture tool was calculated incorrectly. This has been fixed.
  • Motion Vector ROP: Export node path only accepts geo container paths now. This fixes an issue if the user sets the path to a SOP node inside a geometry container, leading to the rendered image being black.
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Houdini Engine for Unity » Fluid vertex animation flickering

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mikelyndon-sesi
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It's possible that you're running into a precision issue. If the polycount is too high the second uv set may be packed too close together to get a proper texture read.
And the pinching looks like the texture is being imported in a normalised space. It's squashing everything into positive values. You probably want to double check your texture compression settings.
The target polycount is the number of polys, not the number of points.
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Houdini for Realtime » Vertex animation broken in Unreal

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mikelyndon-sesi
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Glad to hear it all worked out. Might I suggest using the VertexDisplacement texture compression. It's more accurate.
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Houdini for Realtime » Vertex animation broken in Unreal

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mikelyndon-sesi
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The make loop node needs a fixed point count. The particle fluid point count is changing every frame. For this example I'd suggest wrapping a sphere around the blob and looping the animated sphere. You could also use the soft export instead of the fluid export because the point count would be consistent.

I managed to export it to Unreal without any problems. Have you checked your import settings and setup on the UE4 side?

Mike
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Houdini Engine for Unity » Fluid vertex animation flickering

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mikelyndon-sesi
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Hi Naoki,

Have you tried using the latest version of the Vertex Animation Texture tool for 16.5? I don't think there are any 16.5 specific nodes or features in that particular tool. You might just get some warnings.

Mike
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News » GameDev Tools Updates

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mikelyndon-sesi
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6 July 2018
New Tools
Niagara Utilities - The Houdini Niagara plugin is now available in UE4 4.20 preview 3. A collection of HDA's have been added to create and export data to be used with the plugin. You can find more info at the dedicated Niagara thread [www.sidefx.com]. These are still in beta so any feedback is welcome.
Added:
  • Niagara Impacts
  • Niagara Interpolate
  • Niagara RBD Split
  • Niagara ROP
RBD Workflow - We're looking at ways to improve the workflow of crafting a rigid body simulation. This is still WIP. Check out the video here - GameDev RBD Workflow Tools [vimeo.com]
Added:
  • RBD Fracture
  • RBD Director
  • RBD Solver
  • Simple RBD
Marmoset ROP - You can now send your geometry and textures to Marmoset's Toolbag viewer. We'll be providing more info soon.
Added:
  • Marmoset ROP

Updates
  • Added a colour parameter to the UE4 shader code for soft export of Vertex Animation Textures.

Bug Fixes
  • Fixed a small bug on Axis Align tool where the Max Z value wasn't being respected.
  • Emptied GameBaker High ObjMerge path. Wont throw any absolute path errors anymore when embedding.
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Houdini for Realtime » Retain color id after GameDev Voxel Mesh?

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mikelyndon-sesi
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Hi. Have you tried using an attribute transfer to transfer the colour info?
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News » GameDev Tools Updates

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mikelyndon-sesi
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The Game Development Toolset is a collection of high level tools designed to speed up games related workflows in Houdini. There are a growing list of tools that range from UVing to generating Motion Vectors from simulations. These tools are not tied to the regular Houdini development cycle and become available the moment they are ready for testing.

To keep up to date on the latest tools, please click on the Subscribe Button for this thread. This way we can send you an email any time we announce a new tool.

To learn more about these tools, you can visit the GameDev Tools Overview [www.sidefx.com].

NOTE: When we post a new tool there will be a thread opened in the Houdini for Realtime [www.sidefx.com] forum. You will be able to add comments and suggestions in that location.

Mike Lyndon
Senior Technical Artist
SideFX
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Houdini for Realtime » Flowmaps Help

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mikelyndon-sesi
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Hey Chris,

I've replicated your setup and it seems to be okay. So a couple of questions.
Have you installed the latest version of the gamedev tools?
What image format are you exporting the flowmap as? Some image files have a built in colour space which can offset the values.
Does your object have uv's? We convert the velocity from world to uv space.

If you're setting the velocity to 0 then x and y would 0.5 because that's the centre value. The shader expands 0 - 1 values to -1 and 1. So 0.5 would convert to 0.

Mike
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