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Houdini for Realtime » Retain color id after GameDev Voxel Mesh?
- mikelyndon-sesi
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News » GameDev Tools Updates
- 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
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
Houdini for Realtime » Flowmaps Help
- 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
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
Houdini for Realtime » Houdini Data Interface for UE4's Niagara
- 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
Mike
Houdini for Realtime » VFX Mesh Generators
- mikelyndon-sesi
- 394 posts
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They’re part of the gamedev toolset.
https://www.sidefx.com/tutorials/game-development-toolset-overview/ [www.sidefx.com]
https://www.sidefx.com/tutorials/game-development-toolset-overview/ [www.sidefx.com]
Houdini for Realtime » Houdini Data Interface for UE4's Niagara
- mikelyndon-sesi
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This thread is for the legacy Houdini Niagara plugin.
Please refer to this thread for all future updates.
Houdini Niagara Plugin Unreal Engine 4.25 and beyond. [www.sidefx.com]
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
Please refer to this thread for all future updates.
Houdini Niagara Plugin Unreal Engine 4.25 and beyond. [www.sidefx.com]
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 - May 7, 2020 17:32:14
Houdini for Realtime » Remove cracks in RBD mesh
- mikelyndon-sesi
- 394 posts
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Houdini Engine for Unreal » Access packed primitives from unreal hda
- mikelyndon-sesi
- 394 posts
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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.
Houdini for Realtime » Rotation missing in Rigid Vertex Animation, and how to keyframe RBD Packed objects
- mikelyndon-sesi
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You're starting to delve into intrinsic transform land so I'll give a brief primer just in case. A packed prim's transforms are stored as intrinsic primitive attributes. The ones we care about are pivot and transform because you can change those. The others are immutable. You can also see the changes to those values through the point attributes P, pivot and orient. And you can change the point attributes which will update the intrinsic attributes. It can get a little confusing sometimes because changing one, changes the other.
So, the vertex animation texture tool is looking at the point attributes. The transform pieces node effects the intrinsic transforms but zeros out the orient attribute. Turn on Copy Template Attributes and add orient to pass that attribute through. That should get it working with the VAT exporter.
There are a number of ways to animate individual pieces. If you just want to do it by hand. You can put down a transform sop after your object_merge1 and manually translate and rotate a single piece by setting the group parm to the number of the packed prim you want to effect. The transform sop will update the intrinsic transforms as well as the orient attribute so it should work with exporting to a texture.
Mike
So, the vertex animation texture tool is looking at the point attributes. The transform pieces node effects the intrinsic transforms but zeros out the orient attribute. Turn on Copy Template Attributes and add orient to pass that attribute through. That should get it working with the VAT exporter.
There are a number of ways to animate individual pieces. If you just want to do it by hand. You can put down a transform sop after your object_merge1 and manually translate and rotate a single piece by setting the group parm to the number of the packed prim you want to effect. The transform sop will update the intrinsic transforms as well as the orient attribute so it should work with exporting to a texture.
Mike
Houdini Engine for Unreal » [Request] Tutorial from Luiz on exporting Vector Fields into UE4
- mikelyndon-sesi
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Hi DG,
Can you expand on why the video is no longer relevant? The basic premise is that you can create velocity fields in a number of ways in Houdini. The tool just helps export that into the fga format UE4 is expecting.
Mike
Can you expand on why the video is no longer relevant? The basic premise is that you can create velocity fields in a number of ways in Houdini. The tool just helps export that into the fga format UE4 is expecting.
Mike
Houdini for Realtime » VFX Mesh Generators
- mikelyndon-sesi
- 394 posts
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Hi folks. I've created some basic mesh generators for realtimevfx so that you can hopefully stay in the game engine and still create the kind of geo you would use in a particle system. Looking for feedback.
Edited by mikelyndon-sesi - May 4, 2018 19:21:40
Houdini for Realtime » How to make Rigid Vertex Animation more accurate in UE4
- mikelyndon-sesi
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Okay. This is silly it's so simple. Change your import style on the dopimport to “Fetch Geometry from DOP Network” and it will work. I'm going to speak to the team tomorrow to figure out what's happening under the hood since I'm sure I was the one that suggested you use fetch packed geo.
Mike
Mike
Houdini for Realtime » How to make Rigid Vertex Animation more accurate in UE4
- mikelyndon-sesi
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Wanted to keep you in the loop. I thought it would be a quick fix but I think you've highlighted an underlying issue with how we normalize and then expand both the centroid and the position data. It doesn't happen with all setups and there's no immediate fix. I'll get back to you when I have something.
Houdini for Realtime » Several RBD animations at one FBX for games
- mikelyndon-sesi
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What is the error on the timewarp? It could be that you're trying to access a frame value that isn't available for that sequence so it fails. You probably need to clamp the value.
Also, do you want to see both sims at the same time or one after the other? If they should be sequential then use a switch and set a key on the switch to swap between the one and the other.
Mike
Also, do you want to see both sims at the same time or one after the other? If they should be sequential then use a switch and set a key on the switch to swap between the one and the other.
Mike
Houdini for Realtime » How to make Rigid Vertex Animation more accurate in UE4
- mikelyndon-sesi
- 394 posts
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What values are you using for your bbox min and max? If it's greater than 1000 then you're probably running into floating point precision issues. You could try scaling the sim down but you'd need to check rest, orient and pivot attributes as well (and possibly intrinsic transform).
We've considered another export method that use 2 pixels per position value but I haven't had a chance to test it out and implement it.
Mike
We've considered another export method that use 2 pixels per position value but I haven't had a chance to test it out and implement it.
Mike
Houdini for Realtime » RBD to FBX Error
- mikelyndon-sesi
- 394 posts
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Because you're importing directly from the AutoDopNetwork it's grabbing the ground as well which isn't a packed object.
Better to use a dopimport in a geo container and specify that you just want the Box_Fracture object imported as packed geo.
I think you can ignore the warnings. Those are specific to 16.5 but shouldn't cause any problems.
Better to use a dopimport in a geo container and specify that you just want the Box_Fracture object imported as packed geo.
I think you can ignore the warnings. Those are specific to 16.5 but shouldn't cause any problems.
Houdini for Realtime » RBD to FBX Error
- mikelyndon-sesi
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Houdini for Realtime » Can we bring the standard unreal engine car rig into houdini and back again?
- mikelyndon-sesi
- 394 posts
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Houdini for Realtime » Can we bring the standard unreal engine car rig into houdini and back again?
- mikelyndon-sesi
- 394 posts
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Hey Phillip,
Sorry about the delay. I've attached an example file that should work for you.
I ended up recreating the rig because there's no easy way to match the scale in and out of Houdini. If you got that to work then great!
Things to keep in mind:
*The rootNULL needs to be oriented correctly. So rotate -90 in x and then clean transforms. If you middle click on the node in my example you'll see the values in the world transform section.
*Make sure “Create Root for Subnet” is turned on in your fbx export settings.
*To do a rigid bind you can use a capture override based on groups.
*I think you need to ‘force recapture’ after you've moved the joints and mesh around. So move the joint then the mesh and the force recapture.
Mike
Sorry about the delay. I've attached an example file that should work for you.
I ended up recreating the rig because there's no easy way to match the scale in and out of Houdini. If you got that to work then great!
Things to keep in mind:
*The rootNULL needs to be oriented correctly. So rotate -90 in x and then clean transforms. If you middle click on the node in my example you'll see the values in the world transform section.
*Make sure “Create Root for Subnet” is turned on in your fbx export settings.
*To do a rigid bind you can use a capture override based on groups.
*I think you need to ‘force recapture’ after you've moved the joints and mesh around. So move the joint then the mesh and the force recapture.
Mike
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Houdini Engine for Unreal » Houdini 16.5 Vertex Animation Texture Error
- mikelyndon-sesi
- 394 posts
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Hey Graham,
Sounds like the texture isn't being generated which could be because of the path you've set for the export node. Make sure it's pointing to the object level node not the sop level node.
You can also right click on the VAT hda and choose “allow editing of contents”. Then dive inside and find fluid_copnet/calculate_delta node and make sure it's producing an image. You can check in the composite view.
Mike
Sounds like the texture isn't being generated which could be because of the path you've set for the export node. Make sure it's pointing to the object level node not the sop level node.
You can also right click on the VAT hda and choose “allow editing of contents”. Then dive inside and find fluid_copnet/calculate_delta node and make sure it's producing an image. You can check in the composite view.
Mike
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