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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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Houdini for Realtime » Houdini Data Interface for UE4's Niagara

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mikelyndon-sesi
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Hi folks! Just a quick note. Change your file extension to hcsv instead of csv or you'll get a window popping up at import time in ue4 asking what kind of data table the file is.

Mike
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Houdini for Realtime » VFX Mesh Generators

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mikelyndon-sesi
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They’re part of the gamedev toolset.
https://www.sidefx.com/tutorials/game-development-toolset-overview/ [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,

We're getting closer to an official release of the Houdini plugin for Niagara. I'd love to get some feedback on the tools and suggestions for improvements. I'll use this thread to post example files and videos for anyone interested in testing this stuff out.

You will need to download the latest gamedev tools to access the extra nodes in Houdini.

The plugin comes with the latest preview release of UE4 - 4.20 preview 3

https://vimeo.com/276129245/d0d180d953 [vimeo.com] - This quick start video will get you setup and ready to go with the more involved stuff.

https://vimeo.com/276145729/ad5f1dc611 [vimeo.com] - There are currently 5 content examples available with the plugin. This video will give you a run down of what's going on.

https://vimeo.com/276129739/5aa8e05a88 [vimeo.com] - Niagara ROP walkthrough.

I've attached 2 files. niagara_examples.hip includes the setups used in the content examples.
niagara_destruction_example.hip is a basic rbd setup using some gamedev tools to simplify the rbd workflow [vimeo.com].

Mike
Edited by mikelyndon-sesi - June 21, 2018 18:23:00
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Houdini for Realtime » Remove cracks in RBD mesh

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mikelyndon-sesi
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Does your mesh have uv's?
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Houdini Engine for UE4 » Access packed primitives from unreal hda

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mikelyndon-sesi
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That's possible. If you pass one hda into another the whole thing executes in a Houdini process so any native Houdini content, like packed primitives, is retained.
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