We are using Houdini Engine to bring in some assets into Maya. We successfully did it in Unreal, and are trying to do it in Maya but are running into an error. I have a test .hda which is a simple cube, but for some reason it will not load. I use Load Asset and select the file, and the asset is in my outliner but nothing is visible in my viewport.

Here is the error I get. It is called UnrealEngineTest but it has nothing specific to unreal, it is just my test asset name.

// Warning: The asset: WT::Object/UnrealEngineTest::0.1
was instantiated from:
but the expected path was: /PATH/HSITE/houdini18/otls/WTUnrealEngineTest.hda //
// Error: WT__UnrealEngineTest__0_11: Could not instantiate asset: WT::Object/UnrealEngineTest::0.1
in OTL file: /PATH/HSITE/houdini18/otls/WTUnrealEngineTest.hda

Looks there is nothing it is instantiated from? We have a Houdini FX license for the machine, and it shows it being used when I open Maya. I even made sure Houdini was closed in case that causes a license dispute.

Do you know why I could be having this issue?

Hi Tyler,

Can you try without the WT:: namespace before the asset name? Maya may be trying to convert it to underscores as they are illegal in Maya DAG Paths.

I tried it again with a new asset.
Label = Box1
Name = britton_box1

// Warning: The asset: Object/britton_box1
was instantiated from:
but the expected path was: /PATH/HSITE/houdini18/otls/britton_box1.hda //
// Error: britton_box11: Could not instantiate asset: Object/britton_box1
in OTL file: /PATH/HSITE/houdini18/otls/britton_box1.hda

Should I have to set MAYA_MODULE_PATH, or do I not need to do that since Maya is finding the plugin?

Also, I am running Houdini 18.0.348, with Maya 2020.

johnmather
Hi Tyler,

Can you try without the WT:: namespace before the asset name? Maya may be trying to convert it to underscores as they are illegal in Maya DAG Paths.

I tried another asset with a different name above. Also for the WT:: asset, it was successfully creating a DAG object in the outliner called WT__UnrealEngineTest__0_11.

After testing with this some, I am pretty sure I solved this problem. We are using Arnold with Houdini I think the HDA's Arnold parameters were causing it to not instantiate when bringing into Maya. Once I removed the Arnold parameters on the HDA it worked fine.

To me this seems like it could be a bug, given that even though the Arnold parms would probably not be used in Maya, it would have been helpful if it was called out upon loading in Maya as something wrong. Should I submit a bug report for this?

Hi Tyler,

Could you please attach the HDA so that I can take a look?

johnmather
Hi Tyler,

Could you please attach the HDA so that I can take a look?

I recreated it here.

@Tyler How did you delete the Arnold parameters? I'm not finding them in the edit parameters window.