Exporting animation from Houdini to Unity

Forums Technical Discussion Exporting animation from Houdini to Unity

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kif11: Member; 20 posts; Joined: Sept. 2012; Offline

June 18, 2019 10:01 p.m.

I've been researching this topic for some time and can not find any valuable information.

I have a character with a skeletal and blend shapes animation. This character have multiple animations ether on Takes or in multiple files (with HDAs).

I can not find any reasonable way to bring this animation to Unity.
Making all animations in one timeline and splitting it in Unity or exporting multiple FBXes with the same mesh sound absurd to me.

Can anyone recommend a proper workflow?

Edited by kif11 - June 18, 2019 22:01:16

Attachments:
Screen Shot 2019-06-19 at 10.59.44 AM.png (150.5 KB)


kif11: Member; 20 posts; Joined: Sept. 2012; Offline

June 21, 2019 2:48 a.m.

I surprised that this topic isn't discussed frequently because Houdini has excellent animation capabilities.

I ended up creating HDA for my character and doing different animation on every instance of the asset. Then I exported each animation as a separate FBX. This affectively duplicated the character geometry.

I'm not sure if Unity include it in the build or not.

The approach with char@<anim_name>.fbx described in Unity docs [docs.unity3d.com] doesn't really do anything.


Angel Fucaraccio: Member; 55 posts; Joined: Oct. 2018; Offline

June 21, 2019 12:16 p.m.

There is not many people doing character animation and even less exporting to Unreal or Unity. In a few weeks I´ll be exporting to Unreal, so I´ll let you know what happens.


nicholasralabate: Member; 114 posts; Joined: Sept. 2017; Offline

July 1, 2019 12:49 p.m.

I know a quite few people using Houdini to do character animation for games – H can handle low-poly rigs like a champ. It's pretty straightforward to export to Unity, and the approach with the “@” symbol does work though it's just a notational convenience (it collects the animation clips underneath the model in the Assets window).

Do you have a hip file you can post? Maybe I can help you out!


kif11: Member; 20 posts; Joined: Sept. 2012; Offline

July 1, 2019 1:14 p.m.

@xxyxxy I did use @ notation but it doesn't collects the animation clips underneath the model. (See screenshot)

Edited by kif11 - July 1, 2019 13:15:50

Attachments:
Screen Shot 2019-07-01 at 10.10.59 AM.png (222.5 KB)


GlenD: Member; 118 posts; Joined: Dec. 2013; Offline

July 8, 2019 1:48 p.m.

We use Houdini to Unity for our Character Animation. Right now having a problem with importing our weights into Unity. A bit of an issue.

@kif11 Not sure if you did this or not, Did you bake the Keyframes on the selected animations? RMB on parameter -> Keyframes -> Bake Keyframes. I hope this helps.

Edited by GlenD - July 8, 2019 15:30:06

Attachments:
2019-07-08_13h46_36.png (18.4 KB)


GlenD: Member; 118 posts; Joined: Dec. 2013; Offline

July 10, 2019 12:17 p.m.

@kif11 The ROP FBX Output node now has the ability to Export Animation Clips. Implemented in 17.5.281. I hope this helps.
Glen

Edited by GlenD - July 10, 2019 12:18:01

Attachments:
2019-07-10_12h12_17.png (25.1 KB)


Angel Fucaraccio: Member; 55 posts; Joined: Oct. 2018; Offline

July 24, 2019 12:04 p.m.

I recently used the rop node to export an FBX of my character and it works ok. Just by selecting the hda node got it to load in Unreal with no problem.


kif11: Member; 20 posts; Joined: Sept. 2012; Offline

July 24, 2019 5:10 p.m.

GlenD
@kif11 The ROP FBX Output node now has the ability to Export Animation Clips. Implemented in 17.5.281. I hope this helps.
Glen

This is very cool! Thanks for pointing that out.

I need to update my Houdini to try. I'm currently on 17.5.173.


dylanfries: Member; 10 posts; Joined: Jan. 2020; Offline

April 18, 2020 2:25 p.m.

I would love to see a better tutorial on this. I am trying to export a very simple animation and having a lot of difficulties.


Angel Fucaraccio: Member; 55 posts; Joined: Oct. 2018; Offline

April 19, 2020 9:33 a.m.

Can you specify the problems? There is this tutorial, I haven´t gone trhough it, but I´ve exported from houdini to ue.
https://www.udemy.com/course/game-character-rigging-with-houdini/ [www.udemy.com]

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