I know this is probably not the right thread, but Unreal 4 integration of Houdini Engine could use some love in general.
A few ideas in no particular order:
1. Bake compiled code for procedural geometry generation/manipulation to realtime blueprints.
RFE (ID# 95592)
2. Read and write from and to arbitrary float/string/vector/integer (array) attributes on Blueprints.
RFE (ID# 95591)
3. Rightclick-menu on objects in viewport to add or remove them from an HDA input.
RFE (ID# 95590)
4. Add all objects of entire level or from a sublevel(s) as input (with filter options for object types, like static meshes, skeletal meshes, blueprints, lights, etc.).
5. Exactly recreate the Unreal Spline in Houdini on Sop level so that it becomes possible to import the Unreal Spline as is and to create Unreal Splines in Houdini for testing purposes. (
https://www.sidefx.com/docs/unreal/_curves.html)
Note that currently the best process to get an authentic Unreal Spline for testing of your Unreal-focused HDA, is to open an HDA that has an Unreal Spline plugged in inside of Unreal in Houdini via “Open scene in Houdini”. If that sounds unnecessarily complicated and convoluted to you, you see the issue. XD
See also: RFE (ID=76877)
6. Cooperate with epic games to make it possible for PDG to read/write directly to .umap/.uassets that describe levels, so that high-level processing can happen without even opening Unreal. A result of that could be, that Houdini generates an entire Unreal level (or rather multiple Unreal levels) on a render farm and bakes it to Unreal files that then can be opened in Unreal for fine-tuning by designers etc. A process which then could take advante of the PDG system so that not everything has to be recalculated for every minor edit.
7. An Unreal editor “Mode” (Like “Paint” or “Landscape”) for just working with HDAs. Primary focus would be a list of all HDAs in your scene (as well as quick access to a list of all HDAs you might have on disk and or in the project) and quick access to all parameters of the HDA. This might enable point 3. But the focus should be an overall better UI experience. Individual users have created similar things from scratch for specific projects.
8. Bake curves to Unreal Splines:
https://github.com/sideeffects/HoudiniEngineForUnreal/issues/25 [
github.com]
I hope this makes sense. If you have any questions about individual suggestions, please don't hesitate to ask.
I will make RFEs for those, but I think it is important to point out groups of issues that are related to find good solutions.