Hello, I've been trying to use Pivot Painter tool to animate foliage in UE4. Ignoring the issue that it breaks UVs which can be solved by attribute copy node set to transfer UVs back, it seems to work OK if I use FBX workflow explained in the tutorial: https://vimeo.com/230220683. [vimeo.com]

But if I use Houdini Engine for instancing the geometry it doesn't work even when I try to bake the geometry and drag it into the scene manually.

The question is how to use PivotPainter tool with HoudiniEngie that it transfers the attributes to UE4 properly?

Thank you!

Hi,

Are you trying to instantiate assets you previously exported out using the FBX workflow? Or are you generating the pivotpainter data inside HEngine on the fly?

If you're instantiating previously imported FBX meshes onto points using HEngine make sure you take a look at the “Instanced Static Meshes” tab inside Unreal, and replace that generated mesh with a reference to your source asset from the content browser. More info here: https://www.sidefx.com/docs/unreal/_outputs.html#OutputInstancedStaticMesh [www.sidefx.com]

A more convenient way of instantiating pre-existing assets inside unreal is using something called Attribute instancers. (I recommend doing this instead of the above method) More info here: https://www.sidefx.com/docs/unreal/_instancing.html#InstancingAttributes [www.sidefx.com]

Let me know if that helps,
Paul

Thank you Paul for your reply!

The issue is with packed geometry. The second method is what I was trying to do.
I would like to avoid using FBX meshes and simply instance PivotPainted and then packed geometry in Houdini using copy to points and then bring it via HDA HEngine to unreal as instances. But when I do it and then apply material which uses pivot painter data it treats the mesh like it's a simple non-hierarchical object even though I've used hierarchical pivot painter which works fine with FBX workflow.

Appreciate your help!