Hey everyone!

So I've only been playing around with Houdini for a little while and I spent all day trying to find more information on outputting tiled heightfields, forgive me if this has been answered before I searched through the forums and couldn't find the info I needed.

I setup a super quick test heightfield that is 36km by 36km, and want to divide it into 9x9 tiled heightmaps(each heightmap being 4km by 4km). This is intended to be used in UE4's landscape composition tool so each heightmap can be streamed properly etc.

The problem I'm having right now is that it is exporting the first tile fine, but all the other tiles come out with stretched lines (horizontal or vertical) or completely blank. It's almost as if it is rendering the first tile properly but then it is stretching the edge pixels out much like pixel padding would do when you bake a 3d model(to avoid issues with pixels upon texture LOD's/Mip maps etc).

Any ideas on what I may be doing wrong or is this a bug?



Another issue when trying to import a tiled heightfield into UE4 through the world composition tool is that it requires a specific naming convention. For example, UE4 requires it to be output_x0_y0.png (or .r16 which is preferable format for UE4 landscapes), where as the output I get from Houdini is output.u1_v1.png so it would need to have the period replaced with an underscore and the uv be replaced with xy.

I have attached relevant images to this post. Thank you for your help!

Sorry I don't have the time to look at in depth, right now, but you should try to debug the ROP File Output node. It's an HDA, so you can examine what exactly is happening. At the very least you can fix the naming yourself.

If you are certain this is not doing what it is supposed to, you should send an RFE to SideFX and describe the bug.

Hi,

I've already submitted an RFE for the naming issue ..
(turns out we already had one for that)

I'll get back to you soon regarding the export issue.

Hi,

The heightfield output tiling issue is also a known bug, I'll let you know here when it's fixed.

Hi dpernuit,

i got the exact seme issue. I found that the underlying “Window” Node inside the cop-network isn't getting the right values from the Python Callback Script wich is called by the “Save to Disk” Button on the “Heightfield Output” Node.
It seems to render tiles in a loop by changing attributes on each iteration but the “Window” node Offset is computed outside the Frame - this won't work for shure. Perhaps it runs in the wrong direction.

I'm not into python but since this attributes came from there i think it's worth to check if the logic is really working.


Best Regards,
Marco

Hi,

Thanks for letting us know!
The heightfield output issue has been fixed in the latest daily build (16.0.694).

Hi,

perfect, tested, working! You guys are just awesome, thank you!

Hi,

In tomorrow's daily build (16.0.700), the heightfield output node will have a new file naming convention, XY Tile, that outputs the tile to “name_x0_y0.ext”.

Hi!

I was wondering if it's possible to have a custom naming convention for heightfield tiled output?
I dug a little into the heightfield output node to find a way to alter the naming, without success…

For example I need to add a suffix to the name_x0_y0.ext naming, I would prefer to output the right name instead of having to batch rename output files everytime.

Thanks!

Alex