EDIT: I wrote this before Gametools was rebranded as SideFX Labs….
I have just a basic observation from someone who is very much an artist with almost zero TD skills and has minimal game knowledge; so take everything with that in mind.
At nearly age 50 I'm back in grad school pursuing my MFA in motion media design. I'm currently taking an elective in creating environments with UE4. Obviously, I wanted to leverage Houdini Engine for the class and I've been trying. But what I run into time after time is, the tools are updated so quickly and with so little documentation or tutorials, I routinely find myself watching a presentation from 1-3 years ago, only to find out that workflow isn't how things are done, but instead there's a new node, new tool, etc., etc.
It makes it really frustrating for a student who doesn't really know UE4 and has no experience with Houdini Engine. You see video after video explaining how something is now incredibly easy and simple, but it's out of date or not really documented for newbs like myself.
Could someone just be in charge of general housekeeping? So if a tool is out of date or significantly updated, perhaps pull down the old videos or at least mark them with a note that a newer technique or tool now exists with a link to that tool/technique?
I also have noticed most of the documentation, tutorials and videos tend to skip large chunks of information on either the Unreal side or the Houdini side, assuming the viewer already knows whatever is being discussed. So I can create a simple HDA and bring it into UE4, but there doesn't seem to be any information on how to UV/texture/surface something like that either in Houdini first or in UE4 after import.
At the moment I am doing what should be very simple. I want to use the built-in Steam PyroFX to create some whispy smoke in my UE4 environment. I've found multiple, semi-incomplete tutorials from SideFX and others on similar topics, but none of them really explain when or why you'd use a particular technique or if the technique is still valid.
Example 1: https://vimeo.com/207832662 [vimeo.com] Vertex Animation GDC Project - looks like it'd deal with smoke, but it's not really particles or a fog-like volume. I tried following along, but the tools are different and even when I thought I'd managed to nail it, my imported mesh wound up a jumbled mesh (even with the correct UV settings in UE4).
Example 2: https://vimeo.com/265077965 [vimeo.com] - Fire Presets Game Tools - not exactly what I was looking for, but interesting. However, there's zero information on how to take them from Houdini and get them to Unreal. If it's a game tool, it'd be nice to know how to get things into a game engine.
Example 3: https://www.sidefx.com/tutorials/channel-packing-pyro-data-using-the-texture-sheets-rop/ [www.sidefx.com] - Game Tools PyroFX Texure Sheets. Looks amazing. But I have no idea how to go from Houdini to UE4. He shows Unreal. He shows how excellent things work. He just skips any information on how to actually use any of it. I have no idea what a texture sheet is. Is it something native to Unreal? It's not been covered in my class. I downloaded the example files - they're all .ueassets - great, but not really helpful in going from Houdini to UE4.
Finally: https://www.sidefx.com/docs/unreal/index.html [www.sidefx.com] - the docs. Can you find any examples of how to use anything? How about, right after the info on installation, something simple like, “lets create a textured cube HDA that can have some parameters changed in Unreal”? Or, here's the basic workflow for making an HDA in Houdini that ends with a finished, game-ready, textured, surfaced asset? There doesn't seem to be anything in the docs that helps get the new user up and running.
The docs are just not “artist friendly”. I didn't want to be hit with RTFM, but if anyone can point to the docs and show how I can take a basic PyroFX steam object from Houdini and get it into UE4, I'd be thrilled.
Sorry for the long rant, but it is really frustrating when you absolutely know things are possible and shouldn't be as difficult as they seem. I just spent over an hour rendering with the Texture Sheets ROP only to discover there doesn't seem to be any information on what to do with what you get from the node over to Unreal.
-Paul