Some of the info in this thread may be out-of-date. Please refer to the VAT 2.1 thread [www.sidefx.com] for more info.
Hi folks. We've just released our first pass of an updated vertex animation textures (VAT) ROP.
You can watch the quick start video for Unity [vimeo.com] and for UE4 [vimeo.com]. Consider this a pre-release. If you have any feedback we'd love to hear it. Big shout out to Ben Laidlaw who did most of the hard work and was kind enough to share with us and the community.
I forgot to mention in the ue4 video that you should turn on “full precision uv's” in your mesh settings.
What can you find in the new version?
* Updated shaders and materials for Unity to work with the LWRP in 2019.
* Updated material functions for UE4.
* Tooltips (Detailed help card coming soon).
* Export presets for different game engines.
* If you double-click on the ROP after exporting you can see a debug version of the mesh and textures that were exported.
* Unity exporting will automatically update the material settings.
* Pad textures to power of 2 for texture streaming.
* 2 textures exported for extra precision when limited to 8bit textures.
* And a bunch of other stuff.
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Houdini for Realtime » Vertex Animation Textures ROP 2.0 Released
- mikelyndon-sesi
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Houdini for Realtime » Does vertex animation not work in houdini 17?
- mikelyndon-sesi
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News » GameDev Tools Updates
- mikelyndon-sesi
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16 Aug 2019
New Tools
Updates
Bug Fixes
New Tools
- Added Gaea Tor Processor plugin for Quadspinner's Gaea Terrain Software. For it to work you need Gaea Installed, and have a valid license. You can set up a graph of any scale in Gaea, with appropriate input/output points, expose parameters that you need to modify from Houdini with the Tor Processor. Some convenient presets will follow shortly.
- Straight Skeleton 3D allows you to generate curves from meshes, still have some more work on documenting and exposing extra controls if needed
Updates
- Added a warning to RBD to FBX if a user feeds the tool packed geometry with invalid transforms on it. (Ex scale of 0) Also set the message node to promote errors & warnings to the top level.
Bug Fixes
- Motion Vector ROP final image output respects atlas resolution parm for layouts that could cause fractions.
- Texture Sheet ROP now handles a sequence starting on any frame number.
- Deleted temp attributes on Disc Generator and made material paths optional.
- MapBox node will now properly respect manual mode and the OSM tiles will be offset properly
- Simple Baker would fail in some cases because an internal HDA was unlocked.
Houdini Engine for Unreal » Could someone do some general housekeeping?
- mikelyndon-sesi
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Hey Paul,
Thank you for taking the time to write such a detailed post. You've clearly done your very best to figure this out on your own but still left feeling very frustrated. I'm going to try 2 routes to help you out.
First. If you can, I'd recommend you check out Andreas Glad's, Houdini VFX for Games. [www.pluralsight.com] He does a great job of laying out the full process from beginning to end. Setting up a simulation, rendering that out to a texture sheet. Setting up your particles system and material in UE4.
The other option is to try and piece together what you already have. I think you've found all the right pieces. We just need to string them together.
1. The fire presets node is an easy way to create a simulation without having to worry about too many settings or dive into DOPs. But if you want to do smoke and you're willing to spend a bit more time understanding fluid simulations you could start with this tutorial, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r_WErTEvAic [www.youtube.com]
2. Once you have your basic simulation we need to render that out to a texture sheet. This is where the texture sheet node comes into play. It will render out a sequence of images and then combine that into a single image. Most game engines don't support volume data natively so we render it out to a texture and then fake the volumetric look in the game engine.
3. Once you've imported your texture into UE4 you need to hook that up in a material. SubUV Textures are pretty common in UE4. You can learn more about them here. https://wiki.unrealengine.com/SubUV_Particle_(Tutorial)
At this point, you should have the basics of what you need.
You mention bringing HDA's into UE4 a couple of times which is a separate topic in itself. I'd suggest starting with Rob Magee's video from a couple of years back on getting started with Houdini Engine. It's a couple of years old but still relevant.
Mike
Thank you for taking the time to write such a detailed post. You've clearly done your very best to figure this out on your own but still left feeling very frustrated. I'm going to try 2 routes to help you out.
First. If you can, I'd recommend you check out Andreas Glad's, Houdini VFX for Games. [www.pluralsight.com] He does a great job of laying out the full process from beginning to end. Setting up a simulation, rendering that out to a texture sheet. Setting up your particles system and material in UE4.
The other option is to try and piece together what you already have. I think you've found all the right pieces. We just need to string them together.
1. The fire presets node is an easy way to create a simulation without having to worry about too many settings or dive into DOPs. But if you want to do smoke and you're willing to spend a bit more time understanding fluid simulations you could start with this tutorial, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r_WErTEvAic [www.youtube.com]
2. Once you have your basic simulation we need to render that out to a texture sheet. This is where the texture sheet node comes into play. It will render out a sequence of images and then combine that into a single image. Most game engines don't support volume data natively so we render it out to a texture and then fake the volumetric look in the game engine.
3. Once you've imported your texture into UE4 you need to hook that up in a material. SubUV Textures are pretty common in UE4. You can learn more about them here. https://wiki.unrealengine.com/SubUV_Particle_(Tutorial)
At this point, you should have the basics of what you need.
You mention bringing HDA's into UE4 a couple of times which is a separate topic in itself. I'd suggest starting with Rob Magee's video from a couple of years back on getting started with Houdini Engine. It's a couple of years old but still relevant.
Mike
Houdini for Realtime » Dissolving Character
- mikelyndon-sesi
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Hey Arjan. In your test you're showing the rigid export but for what you're trying to do you probably want to use the fluid export which will allow each triangle to shrink and disappear (or just disappear).
Based on your effect you might want to try doing that directly in UE4 with an opacity map and animating the threshold.
Mike
Based on your effect you might want to try doing that directly in UE4 with an opacity map and animating the threshold.
Mike
Technical Discussion » Query tab menu context folders
- mikelyndon-sesi
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Hi,
You can access it through the HDADefinition class.
So if you have a node selected you could do something like,
You can access it through the HDADefinition class.
So if you have a node selected you could do something like,
import xml.etree.ElementTree as ET node = hou.node('/currently/selected/node/path') definition = node.type().definition() toolssection = definitions.sections()['Tools.shelf'] root = ET.fromstring(toolssection.contents()) for path in root.iter('toolSubmenu'): print(path.text)
News » GameDev Tools Updates
- mikelyndon-sesi
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06 Aug 2019
Updates
Bug Fixes
Updates
- Added curvature map baking to the Maps Baker. Advanced controls include Flatness Filter & Scale, in addition to other tracing properties.
Bug Fixes
- GameDev Bakers would fail to bake if basecolor wasn't toggled on.
- GameDev Toon Shader - hooked up light colour and intensity in the shader.
- Texture Sheet ROP renders correct frame range when changing start and end values.
- Motion Vectors ROP now reloads files from the temp directory before rendering the final atlas.
- Hooked up cusping angle controls to geometry frozen using Freeze Threshold in Destruction Cleanup
Houdini Engine for Unreal » can we create BP nodes with Houdini Engine ?
- mikelyndon-sesi
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I think what you’re suggesting is generating ue4 components through Houdini engine. It’s more likely that data generated by an HDA can be accessed and modified in blueprints. Please see Damien’s post on v2.0 for more details.
https://www.sidefx.com/forum/topic/67922/ [www.sidefx.com]
Mike
https://www.sidefx.com/forum/topic/67922/ [www.sidefx.com]
Mike
Houdini Engine for Unreal » Baking substance maps in Houdini Engine
- mikelyndon-sesi
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There’s some work being done on a new version of the plugin that will run in COPs. We should have some more info to share in about a months time.
Mike
Mike
News » GameDev Tools Updates
- mikelyndon-sesi
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19 Jul 2019
New Tools
Updates
New Tools
- Added Extract Silhouette SOP. It will extract the silhouette of the input geometry for the specified axis. Solution by user petz
Updates
- Added a toggle that allows the PivotPainter node to do automatic UV-Layout for lightmaps.
- Bumped version of Maps Baker, due to the renaming of the Bake button. (Not to break backwards compatibility) It's now “execute” like the other ROPs
Houdini for Realtime » Rop VAT export data different on Linux Houdini vs Windows.
- mikelyndon-sesi
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Hi Greg,
Taking another look at this and the issue is the operating system and rbd rather than the VAT export.
If you run the same hip file on different operating systems you will get different results from the sim. That's just the nature of how bullet works.
However, the resulting VAT files are exporting the correct data for their respective OS's. I ran your hip file on both Mac and Linux, imported the files into UE4 and they both work correctly. Remember you'd have to use different bbox min and max values for each based on what the particular file generates.
If you're still having issues let me know.
Mike
Taking another look at this and the issue is the operating system and rbd rather than the VAT export.
If you run the same hip file on different operating systems you will get different results from the sim. That's just the nature of how bullet works.
However, the resulting VAT files are exporting the correct data for their respective OS's. I ran your hip file on both Mac and Linux, imported the files into UE4 and they both work correctly. Remember you'd have to use different bbox min and max values for each based on what the particular file generates.
If you're still having issues let me know.
Mike
Houdini for Realtime » Rop VAT export data different on Linux Houdini vs Windows.
- mikelyndon-sesi
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Sorry about the delay. I can confirm that there is a difference but I'm currently travelling. As soon as I'm back in the office next week I'll debug the cause.
Mike
Mike
News » GameDev Tools Updates
- mikelyndon-sesi
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08 Jul 2019
Updates
Bug Fixes
Updates
- Sweep Geometry SOP now allows the input curve to have its own N and up, giving you more flexibility in how the geometry is sweeped.
- SketchFab ROP now has the ability to export skeletal meshes. (Animated geometry through bones). This only works for the ROP, and has not been exposed on the sop wrapper. To make use of this feature, set the “Geo Path” parameter to the subnet containing the bones and geometry.
- Added Transparency (cutout) support to Marmoset Toolbag ROP. Also updated the demoscene to reflect this change.
- Added UDIM support to Maps Baker. Also improved the Surface Normal based tracing algorithm. Speed has also been improved for High-Resolution Quad meshes.
- Vertex Animation Texture soft shader for Unity 2018 uses _Time.y as default for animation.
- Fixed typo on Measure Curvature sop. Also renamed “Fit From 0-1” to “Fit To 0-1”, and fixed bug in the max range calculation.
- Fixed minor issue in Delete Small Parts. Also added the ability to directly extract the largest piece without having to play with the threshold slider. The tool now also allows you to specify custom piece attributes if desired.
- Fixed Maps Baker Flip Y Tangent Normalmap logic, and added option to flip the X axis too. The produced normalmap for invalid regions will now also be {0.5,0.5,1} instead of black. This should reduce any seam artifacts around UV shells.
- Updated Calculate Occlusion sop to match Mantra. It now also has two less parameters to tweak, and produces better results by default.
- Updated the AO calculation logic in Maps Baker to match Principledshader (Mantra)
- All baker nodes have been updated to v2.0 Mostly refactoring for better stability.
- AV Photogrammetry - Changed message node path to pick up ALICEVISION_PATH warning
Bug Fixes
- Fixed case where Maps Baker would return empty normalmaps when reprojecting a map, but the highpoly didn't have normals.
- CSV Exporter will now grab the rendernode from a given geometry node if a user specified a geometry node instead of a sop.
- External Script Editor fixed error if code snippet includes multi-byte character(s) thanks to Harayoki.
- Texture Sheets ROP would fail if there was a mismatch in resolutions between each frame and the total sheet.
- Fixed PivotPainter modifying normals if they were of type vertex
- Removed hard coded path for custom channels in Games Baker
- Games Baker would fail if Base Color was toggled off when writing out textures.
- Fixed case where UVs would be promoted to points in PivotPainter, which would merge edges of UV shells.
- Updated Building Generator to solve an edge case where it would fail on import geometry from OSM.
- Maps Baker will now correctly output values when not hitting any geometry for the heightmap.
- Vertex Animation Texture rigid export was pulling data from the soft export stream.
- Fixed reverse blur parameters on Measure Curvature
- Updating the Matcap shader to work with viewport subdivision when the input mesh doesn't have normals
- Measure Curvature had convex and concave backwards, fixed the parameters but bumped it to version 2 to not break any scene files
- Fixed an issues with Mapbox not respecting negative longitudes
- Fixed Heightmap calculation in MapsBaker
- Fixed faceted look in Maps Baker for texture reprojection.
- Niagara ROP Cache Split button wasn't connected to the internal caching mechanism.
Technical Discussion » Dynamic Constraints On Deforming Passive Mesh
- mikelyndon-sesi
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Hmmm. I think it might have something to do with the deforming object having infinite mass and possibly how the transforms update with respect to the constraints.
I've tried a couple of things - changing the sphere to a packed object (for consistency so that all the rbd objects are packed).
I've added a name attribute to the constraint points that connect to the sphere, so they know what to follow.
And I made the bottom of the wall inactive just to give it some stability.
Oh. And tried soft instead of spring constraints because they're essentially the same.
But it's still exploding will need to keep digging.
Mike
I've tried a couple of things - changing the sphere to a packed object (for consistency so that all the rbd objects are packed).
I've added a name attribute to the constraint points that connect to the sphere, so they know what to follow.
And I made the bottom of the wall inactive just to give it some stability.
Oh. And tried soft instead of spring constraints because they're essentially the same.
But it's still exploding will need to keep digging.
Mike
Edited by mikelyndon-sesi - July 5, 2019 10:03:17
Houdini for Realtime » Rop VAT export data different on Linux Houdini vs Windows.
- mikelyndon-sesi
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Houdini for Realtime » Game dev tools - game dev texture sheets error
- mikelyndon-sesi
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Houdini for Realtime » Game dev tools - game dev texture sheets error
- mikelyndon-sesi
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Is your “Node To Render” set to /obj/geo1/file1? If so, it might fail because it's expecting an object level path - /obj/geo1
Houdini for Realtime » Game dev tools - game dev texture sheets error
- mikelyndon-sesi
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Hi. Have you tried rendering the volume with a mantra ROP to make sure that the basics are working before using the Texture Sheets ROP?
Mike
Mike
Houdini for Realtime » Quaternion bug when baking RBD rotation into a texture
- mikelyndon-sesi
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Hey brosty. Are you converting from quaternion to euler? Euler flipping is pretty common because of how rotations are expressed differently between the two. cgwiki has a file and comments on the problem here.
http://www.tokeru.com/cgwiki/index.php?title=HoudiniChops#RBD_filter_high_frequency_noise [www.tokeru.com]
http://www.tokeru.com/cgwiki/index.php?title=HoudiniChops#RBD_filter_high_frequency_noise [www.tokeru.com]
Houdini for Realtime » Vertex Animation to UE4 problem
- mikelyndon-sesi
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