Hi,

I am getting an error while importing my character into UE4. It is related to the bones name in Houdini since this rigged was created using Autorig tool in Houdini. Below is the message I am getting from UE4, then the engine will not import the character due to this error. I tried to change the name and added “New”after the wording and this is not actually a bone it is IK control:

There is a skylight in houdini which will generate a blue sky color to for you. For the clouds and sun there are some tutorials in Youtube for this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NZXU2AOuZX8 [www.youtube.com]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NZXU2AOuZX8 [www.youtube.com]

It is related to the material of the eyelashes you imported. Change the material of eyelashes to opacity instead of diffuse and turn down the diffuse multiplayer to 0 at the base tab:

Hi,

Regarding to Mapbox, make sure that you have entered the the account credential inside the node.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n8AL-_gkIZQ&t=1087s [www.youtube.com]

Can i place objects on the terrain like houses and roads, and then create a digital asset of my map, and just open it in Unreal, would it work with LOD ?

Check below video intro for one terrain workflow:

https://www.sidefx.com/tutorials/test-3/ [www.sidefx.com]

Hey Marc,

The thing that made me stop experimenting is that there are too many things to learn and focus on. I did not do a rig before at all it was my first experience with Houdini, following Goldfarb and other people tutorials resulted in a great improvement in my skills till I came up with my own workflow and this is how ‘'I’' do it kinda of thing. I mentioned this before but it does not take me a lot of time now to start a rig for the whole body except the face . To be clear with something, I learned to use blend shapes and I used them and I can freely animate in Houdini, but it was my intention to expand and go with Motion Builder to try some mark less facial animation. Came to know later that I still need to place the bones in the face, I did not get away from that facial rigging based on bones system . I am sure there will be tutorials whether it is from SideFX or individuals and it will clear this topic once in for all.

This is the new era we are living in I guess, people share their ideas and other people get creative. Smart organizations get advantages and even adopt these ideas of sharing as a part of MBM (Market Based Management). I have seen some 14 years old kids doing some coding for Unity and creating his game(s), guess where did he get that from ? It is not from the Fundamentals of Unity 001 I assure you that!And you know how he got to that level. Beside, maybe this is how Unity got their enormous community (Something to think about).

Nothing wrong with Houdini at all I am still using it and accomplishing my goals in a very short time thanks for those who shared their ideas and tutorials and thanks to SideFX for updating their videos tutorials section in almost daily basis. I have deviated from the main topic in my last part here, my apologize.

Exporting to MotionBuilder did not work for me, blend shapes were recognized but not moving for some unknown reason. I am not sure If I will be able to animate lip sync at this point. Facial rigging is frustrating topic for me, so I decided to stop my experiments with facial rigging till the release of further tutorials.

I moved out from face auto rig to creating my own blend shapes in Houdini. Nothing wrong with the tool really but I need more training on how to adjust things in the auto facial rig system. I am pretty sure it is a game changer in the industry.

I am satisfied with the results of blend shapes in Houdini and I will be moving on to test the blend shapes in MB for further testing with facial mocap.

Thanks you Marc and Goldfarb for the support and comments.

Marc,

I did group the eye balls, but not sure how to exclude them from auto rig deformation.

Michael,

Thanks for the help and explanation. Any chance to resize to the markers to make it match the eyelids ? with the current settings I see the controller is closing the eye lens instead of the lid. The geometry is taking from Daz3d, do you suggest that I shall bring it in with eyes half closed and mouth half open ?

Attaching the file.

Still playing with the basic Auto face rigging. I think I need some advice with placing the eyes markers. below are the pictures of the results and the way I placed the markers:

Thanks Marc and Goldfarb. The problem I replaced File node with Object merge.

I am still practicing on the face rigging system in order to get it accurate. But today I received this Error message after generating the rig:

Thank you Marc for your reply and clarfications. I am still learning too many things and moving out from Autodesk has its affect on me. I am watching Maya tutorial and trying to convert the concept in Houdini. I know it is hard, but guess what I got the facial system work in Houdini after all and after too many attempts in my own, The purpose is purley learning I have nothing in mind that'a why I did not care about the mesh resoultion.but it will be defintley the start of exporting to UE4 not for game but for video productions.

To be honest, I am amazed with the system of facial rigging in Houdini, despite the clusterd results I got after weight capturing but the system is really animation friendly and would blow up other packges in the future. I will try to post the progress and some pics after cleaning the weight.

One more thing, I watched your videos. Your comparison with Modo is my favourite.

Thx,

Moin Marc,

First post was a demostration of my thoughts about facial rigging since I have not done any before. There were too many words and terms involved but the most I found being used is “blend shape”. However, next post I found out is that Houdini has a facial rigging system, I described my expereince with it for today. And as a begginer,I thought that videos tutorials are required.

My applogize for any confusion.

Prost,

Ok, this is some progress I made so far. Houdini has it is own Facial Auto Rig System, which seems to be very interesting if you know what you are doing. The system build some blend shape using a cage shape that you can project into the face. The system is very easy to use, but when it comes to the caging process and moving the markers around the face, it would take a lot of time. I have spent almost three hours re-placing the cage markers in the face without a success. You will need the cage to be well projected in order to Houdini to generate a Mask. Again, I have failed in the Cage stage because of re-placing the markers. It would be easier if the cage blended shapes can be controlled via Soft selection tool, edges, points…etc for the projection purposes only. Then markers can be generated at later stages. Shout out to @goldfarb, if you are reading this, I read somewhere that you are preparing a facial rig tutorial alongside with weight capturing tool tutorial, please kick it in and let us have these tutorials. The reason I am saying this is because rigging the rest of the bones in Houdini is almost like 15 mins work now. Thanks to your hard work in your rigging tutorials!




The next approach I have with facial rigging is to generate the blend shapes myself.

References I used:

https://www.sidefx.com/docs/houdini/pypanel/autorigs.html [www.sidefx.com]

Hi,

I completed several rigging in Houdini. I am now moving with facial rigging and I do not know where to start from. I did some some search and I saw some people talking about blend shapes: (Duplicating the head geometry). At the same time I saw this interesting article in Sidefx http://www.sidefx.com/docs/houdini/character/facialrigging.html [www.sidefx.com] . It is about using Morph tool to create your the facial rig. At this point, I have no idea about facial rigging and how to start. I am attaching my hip file which I am working on in case someone would like to walk me through the process and help me understand it.

I found the answer to above inquire myself. I am writing it down in case someone search this forum or the web for the same thing. If anyone else is reading this and he can contribute or comment, please feel free to do so :

There are two approaches whether you have your character rigged in houdini or imported from else where:

1- Path animation based on Motion Path node:

At the object level, create a new Geo node, and inside it you can use Agent node. Then, at the agent node parameters select the character rig or FBX file. Check if the animation is also imported at this stage. Now, you can use Motion Path tool to set up a path for the animation.

2- Path animation based on Crowed Simulation:

This approach is a little bit longer and requires basic knowledge of crowed simulation in Houdini (Search it in Youtube), but it is somehow more animation friendly since there will more parameters exposed for animation to control your character movement and speed. You do not need to use the Populate node since you are only working with one character. Once you are done sitting up the agent and crowed simulation in this step, you can draw the path and you Crowed Path node from the shelf tool instead of the Motion Path.

Cheers!!

Hi,

First of all, I am asking a lot of questions these days as I am progressing with my Houdini trail projects, please bear with me and appreciate your time. The people in this forum are very supportive.

I had two characters, the first character is a creature I rigged and animated in Houdini myself. The other one is a simple character with a walking animation from Maximo. My objective is to create a walking path as I have the walking cycle for both models, but something wrong with my work flow, I am not able to get the the models following the path at all. I used below tutorial from SideFX for the path motion.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MFg3lB7PCRM&t=47s [www.youtube.com]

Thx BabaJ. I managed getting SOP into Subnet node. Then I started to use it as hda.