Thanks for the files. I found the bug, basically the model is really large and I'm doing some volume conversion to scatter the triangle cloud points. So it's taking too long and eventually blowing out of memory trying to create such a large volume. I'm working on a fix that will scale the mesh down, scatter points, then scale it back up and that should work.
As a workaround you can try scaling the mesh down a tad. The proper fix will be in with the version 2.0 of the tools which I'm hoping will be out in the next couple of weeks
Luiz
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Houdini Engine for Unreal » Houdini 16 vertex animation import for UE4
- lkruel
- 240 posts
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Houdini Lounge » To Character Rig... or Not
- lkruel
- 240 posts
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Marc got carried away…
Yes I understand what the problem is and we're actively working on improving that workflow Hopefully we'll have something to show soon
Luiz
Yes I understand what the problem is and we're actively working on improving that workflow Hopefully we'll have something to show soon
Luiz
Houdini Lounge » To Character Rig... or Not
- lkruel
- 240 posts
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Great conversation, so maybe a better way to phrase it would be. What would you like to learn?
Do you want to get the UE4 character doing a round trip? Do you want to animate in Houdini? Do you want to apply animation data to the UE4 character? Having more information can help us build the right learning materials and like the other people have said… RFEs are great and it helps us know what to build, saying “this sucks I can't use it” is also good piece of information but doesn't tell us much about how to move forward
Do you want to get the UE4 character doing a round trip? Do you want to animate in Houdini? Do you want to apply animation data to the UE4 character? Having more information can help us build the right learning materials and like the other people have said… RFEs are great and it helps us know what to build, saying “this sucks I can't use it” is also good piece of information but doesn't tell us much about how to move forward
Houdini Lounge » To Character Rig... or Not
- lkruel
- 240 posts
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Hi FLS-Eugene
I'm sorry your initial impressions didn't play out as you hoped.
I just wanted to chime in and reassure you that we are indeed looking at it. I have managed to get the UE4 mannequin doing a round trip from the exporter Hero_TPP FBX back into Unreal with animation data. We have also fixed a bug that should be in the next daily build which lets you properly export the new biharmonic weighting to FBX (and subsequently game engines) and the updates for H16 make it even easier to do some of the things needed to get a game skeleton exported (parenting whole hierarchies, etc). And we have a masterclass on rigging coming very soon.
As McNistor mentioned, there are a lot of incredibly powerful rigging capabilities in Houdini, just biharmonic skinning alone would've won me over if I was still in production.
We are very actively looking into ways of smoothing the edges in regards to getting characters/animation data out of Houdini and into game engines. And you are correct, a lot of it is just putting out the resources and examples on how to do the workflows, and the other bit is making sure the tools are intuitive enough to pick up.
Hopefully you'll keep an eye out for the updates,
Have a great day,
Luiz
I'm sorry your initial impressions didn't play out as you hoped.
I just wanted to chime in and reassure you that we are indeed looking at it. I have managed to get the UE4 mannequin doing a round trip from the exporter Hero_TPP FBX back into Unreal with animation data. We have also fixed a bug that should be in the next daily build which lets you properly export the new biharmonic weighting to FBX (and subsequently game engines) and the updates for H16 make it even easier to do some of the things needed to get a game skeleton exported (parenting whole hierarchies, etc). And we have a masterclass on rigging coming very soon.
As McNistor mentioned, there are a lot of incredibly powerful rigging capabilities in Houdini, just biharmonic skinning alone would've won me over if I was still in production.
We are very actively looking into ways of smoothing the edges in regards to getting characters/animation data out of Houdini and into game engines. And you are correct, a lot of it is just putting out the resources and examples on how to do the workflows, and the other bit is making sure the tools are intuitive enough to pick up.
Hopefully you'll keep an eye out for the updates,
Have a great day,
Luiz
Houdini Engine for Unreal » Houdini 16 vertex animation import for UE4
- lkruel
- 240 posts
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Hey Clinton, the file you sent has some missing textures so I can't recreate what you're trying to do.
But one thing to keep in mind is that the SOFT technique only works for meshes that keep the same topology all the way through. For something with changing topology you want to look at the FLUID technique.
Let me know if that helps and thanks for trying this feature out!
The other thing to note is that you have to hook up the textures to the materials as well. Usually this is done by making a Material Instance of the material and hooking up your textures there.
If you can zip up the textures I can try taking a look at it,
Luiz
But one thing to keep in mind is that the SOFT technique only works for meshes that keep the same topology all the way through. For something with changing topology you want to look at the FLUID technique.
Let me know if that helps and thanks for trying this feature out!
The other thing to note is that you have to hook up the textures to the materials as well. Usually this is done by making a Material Instance of the material and hooking up your textures there.
If you can zip up the textures I can try taking a look at it,
Luiz
Houdini Engine for Unreal » Getting animation and dynamics into UE4 without HDA'S
- lkruel
- 240 posts
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Hey!
I'm glad you liked the stream and that it helped you make a decision! The Vertex Animation Stuff in particular is indeed coming in 16. But you can try getting a regular alembic cache going into UE4 right now.
The main ways of getting animation data are converting it to some sort of skeleton, alembic or textures.
We're planning on making lots of training material for the new features, but in the meantime I can recommend the following videos if you want to learn some basics.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_nceKi0vTd4&list=PLjOCJrhSBGUG9uqJ2rMe6ByLJcTD9Jau7 [youtube.com]
https://www.udemy.com/game-effects-using-houdini-ue4/ [udemy.com]
These aren't unreal specific but teach you some good fundamentals
http://www.tokeru.com/cgwiki/?title=Houdini [tokeru.com]
http://www.digitaltutors.com/software/Houdini-tutorials-all [digitaltutors.com]
http://www.gametutor.com/live/tutorials/houdini/ [gametutor.com]
http://www.entagma.com/ [entagma.com]
I'm glad you liked the stream and that it helped you make a decision! The Vertex Animation Stuff in particular is indeed coming in 16. But you can try getting a regular alembic cache going into UE4 right now.
The main ways of getting animation data are converting it to some sort of skeleton, alembic or textures.
We're planning on making lots of training material for the new features, but in the meantime I can recommend the following videos if you want to learn some basics.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_nceKi0vTd4&list=PLjOCJrhSBGUG9uqJ2rMe6ByLJcTD9Jau7 [youtube.com]
https://www.udemy.com/game-effects-using-houdini-ue4/ [udemy.com]
These aren't unreal specific but teach you some good fundamentals
http://www.tokeru.com/cgwiki/?title=Houdini [tokeru.com]
http://www.digitaltutors.com/software/Houdini-tutorials-all [digitaltutors.com]
http://www.gametutor.com/live/tutorials/houdini/ [gametutor.com]
http://www.entagma.com/ [entagma.com]
Houdini Engine for Unreal » Looking for workaround for instancing lights in Unreal
- lkruel
- 240 posts
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Instancing lights is currently possibly by using a copy SOP and making sure they're instances. The plugin will have a new slot to replace the actors that are instanced and you can put in a light blueprint in there.
Houdini Engine for Unreal » Character to BFX -> Unreal
- lkruel
- 240 posts
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Yeah I'll be there. I have 2 conference talks (Tech Art Bootcamp and AI Summit) and I'm sure we'll have some more presentations planned.
Houdini Engine for Unreal » Character to BFX -> Unreal
- lkruel
- 240 posts
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Just to chime in here. I recently joined SideFX and am taking over Steven's game development tools. My first focus has been Real Time FX in order to round out the strong toolset.
Character animation is very close to my heart and something that I'm getting more into in Houdini. I've managed to get the UE4 mannequin to do a roundtrip into Houdini and out with animation. You guys are right, blendshapes are becoming an important part of a gamedev animation pipeline and I'll make sure to push those RFEs internally.
You are correct, we are doing a massive push into gamedev, and we're going to continue to do so (can't wait to share what we've been working on). The first areas are modeling and FX, but animation isn't too far behind.
Just wanted to let you know that I'm listening and going to do all I can to represent the needs of the gamedev users.
Character animation is very close to my heart and something that I'm getting more into in Houdini. I've managed to get the UE4 mannequin to do a roundtrip into Houdini and out with animation. You guys are right, blendshapes are becoming an important part of a gamedev animation pipeline and I'll make sure to push those RFEs internally.
You are correct, we are doing a massive push into gamedev, and we're going to continue to do so (can't wait to share what we've been working on). The first areas are modeling and FX, but animation isn't too far behind.
Just wanted to let you know that I'm listening and going to do all I can to represent the needs of the gamedev users.
Houdini Engine for Unreal » Vertex animation of fluid simulations
- lkruel
- 240 posts
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Hey there!
That's a pretty wide topic with multiple solutions, but limiting it to the approach you seem to be taking here are my thoughts. One note is that this is highly dependent on the sim itself, so some solutions will work better than others.
I would try to find a frame in time where the sim is the most “average”
Turn that into geo like you said and save that off as your game mesh.
The key is to use the Ray Sop to project the game mesh on the simulation, this will cause the points to just project down into the mesh and not get carried with the sim, which solves problem 2
In theory this would work perfectly for something like a river or a ocean. You can then take the mesh after the ray and either export that out to alembic, joints or textures.
Hope that helps!
That's a pretty wide topic with multiple solutions, but limiting it to the approach you seem to be taking here are my thoughts. One note is that this is highly dependent on the sim itself, so some solutions will work better than others.
I would try to find a frame in time where the sim is the most “average”
Turn that into geo like you said and save that off as your game mesh.
The key is to use the Ray Sop to project the game mesh on the simulation, this will cause the points to just project down into the mesh and not get carried with the sim, which solves problem 2
In theory this would work perfectly for something like a river or a ocean. You can then take the mesh after the ray and either export that out to alembic, joints or textures.
Hope that helps!
Houdini Engine for Unreal » Example for using Landscape input?
- lkruel
- 240 posts
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Here you go!
Couple of things to note, make sure you have Transform Change Triggers Cook checked to have the asset auto update.
And I also had to check Export Full Landscape Geometry, but I'm not sure if it's really necessary.
Let me know if you have any questions!
Luiz
Couple of things to note, make sure you have Transform Change Triggers Cook checked to have the asset auto update.
And I also had to check Export Full Landscape Geometry, but I'm not sure if it's really necessary.
Let me know if you have any questions!
Luiz
Work in Progress » Instant Meshes Bridge Sop
- lkruel
- 240 posts
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Thanks Gianny. I have an update the incorporates goldleaf's fixes and adds another layer of caching (caches the high_obj so you don't have to reexport it when you're tweaking polycounts). I'll upload it this week, just testing it as a part of a larger pipeline.
Work in Progress » Instant Meshes Bridge Sop
- lkruel
- 240 posts
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Work in Progress » Instant Meshes Bridge Sop
- lkruel
- 240 posts
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Hahaha! That's why I love open source development!
That's so awesome! That was on my todo list and you implemented it better than I would've.
I originally did it with the bake button because I thought it would be too slow (because i was testing with 7million poly meshes), but when I did the test with the Pyro I thought that it could probably work like a regular sop.
Where can I download it? And can I add it to our Game Development Tools? The last thing I want to do is stash the executable path somewhere like a global variable to if you create a new node you don't have to fill it out.
Thanks a lot!
And yeah, command line options for the guided inputs and adaptive resolution (so you don't get even quads) would be nice updates.
That's so awesome! That was on my todo list and you implemented it better than I would've.
I originally did it with the bake button because I thought it would be too slow (because i was testing with 7million poly meshes), but when I did the test with the Pyro I thought that it could probably work like a regular sop.
Where can I download it? And can I add it to our Game Development Tools? The last thing I want to do is stash the executable path somewhere like a global variable to if you create a new node you don't have to fill it out.
Thanks a lot!
And yeah, command line options for the guided inputs and adaptive resolution (so you don't get even quads) would be nice updates.
Houdini Learning Materials » vex coding fundamentals
- lkruel
- 240 posts
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I just recently found out about this website myself, but it's a goldmine for learning VEX
http://www.tokeru.com/cgwiki/?title=HoudiniVex [tokeru.com]
http://www.tokeru.com/cgwiki/?title=HoudiniVex [tokeru.com]
Work in Progress » Instant Meshes Bridge Sop
- lkruel
- 240 posts
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Interesting… I haven't had any issues so far. I usually have done things from 50k down to 1k. One thing that I noticed helped was running the mesh through the remesh node before feeding it to Instant Meshes. Maybe try that?
Work in Progress » Instant Meshes Bridge Sop
- lkruel
- 240 posts
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Uploaded a new version over the existing one with goldleaf's fix. Let me know if that works for you now
Work in Progress » Instant Meshes Bridge Sop
- lkruel
- 240 posts
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Hey Cyzor
Yeah the fix that he did will work for you too. I'll update the HDA and post again.
You can also unchecked the hide dialog box and that might work
Yeah the fix that he did will work for you too. I'll update the HDA and post again.
You can also unchecked the hide dialog box and that might work
Edited by lkruel - June 18, 2016 11:18:08
Work in Progress » Instant Meshes Bridge Sop
- lkruel
- 240 posts
- Offline
Yeah, let me know if you need any help. It should be pretty straight forward.
Here's an example done to a Pyro mesh.
Left is IsoOffset, Middle is InstantMeshes, Right is Remesh
For this case I actually used the remesh data to feed into InstantMeshes as it gave better results
Here's an example done to a Pyro mesh.
Left is IsoOffset, Middle is InstantMeshes, Right is Remesh
For this case I actually used the remesh data to feed into InstantMeshes as it gave better results
Work in Progress » Instant Meshes Bridge Sop
- lkruel
- 240 posts
- Offline
Hey everybody,
I put together a quick little SOP that lets you call instant meshes from inside Houdini.
For those that don't know, instant meshes is a really cool open source software that does a great job with quad remeshing.
https://github.com/wjakob/instant-meshes [github.com]
So I made a little sop that wraps around the command line interface for it and will remesh and bring it back into Houdini for you. The awesome model is done by Mike Pavlovich [artstation.com].
Behind the scenes what it's doing is saving off the input geo as an OBJ, running the instant meshes commandline and then bringing the output obj back into Houdini. Saves you a few steps.
Unfortunately the cool feature of combing the topology isn't available commandline, but you can still get some pretty nice results with the defaults.
To use it, download the instant meshes exe and point to it in the Setting tab of the SOP, and then setup some OBJ paths for the temp data (somewhere writable)
You can download the HDA HERE [kruelgames.com]
Then just select your target polycount and hit Bake!
Let me know if you have any questions! And I hope someone finds it useful
I put together a quick little SOP that lets you call instant meshes from inside Houdini.
For those that don't know, instant meshes is a really cool open source software that does a great job with quad remeshing.
https://github.com/wjakob/instant-meshes [github.com]
So I made a little sop that wraps around the command line interface for it and will remesh and bring it back into Houdini for you. The awesome model is done by Mike Pavlovich [artstation.com].
Behind the scenes what it's doing is saving off the input geo as an OBJ, running the instant meshes commandline and then bringing the output obj back into Houdini. Saves you a few steps.
Unfortunately the cool feature of combing the topology isn't available commandline, but you can still get some pretty nice results with the defaults.
To use it, download the instant meshes exe and point to it in the Setting tab of the SOP, and then setup some OBJ paths for the temp data (somewhere writable)
You can download the HDA HERE [kruelgames.com]
Then just select your target polycount and hit Bake!
Let me know if you have any questions! And I hope someone finds it useful
Edited by lkruel - June 17, 2016 15:50:58
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