I am just getting into Houdini Engine for Maya/Unreal, and am trying to create an instancer in those DCCs for production. It was pretty easy for Unreal but for some reason Maya seems to be a bit more tricky. I have been learning a lot on this forum, but my lack of Maya experience lately still has be with some questions, which I was wondering if I could have some help with.
We are trying to instance imported assets through the Houdini Engine in Maya, either as DAG objects or with Maya's instancer.
1. When baking out instances, there is a preference I have for the Asset Options (Ungroup on Bake = Off, Use Instancer Node = On…). Is there a way to set defaults so artists don't have to change that every time before they bake out their instances?
2. What are the advantages of using the instance Obj node vs. copy Sop with Pack Geo Before Copying turned on?
3. I saw you can add a custom attribute to the instances using the copy Sop (can you do the same with the instancer node?). Where can I found the output attributes in Maya for my instances?
4. It seems like whenever I bake an asset with Instances (both when Use Instancer Node is On and Off), the instanced objects loose their name. Is there a way to maintain their original name? as right now they seem to all get the name of the last node in the output sop.
5. Is there a way to create an attribute to instance a specific DAG object? In the Unreal engine plugin, you could specify the “unreal_instance” and point that to something like “StaticMesh'/PATH/OBJECTNAME'”. Is there a way to do the same in Maya?
6. One of the assets posted on the forum was helpful, however I saw that when Use Instancer Node is checked on and baked, nothing is seemed to be baked out. I know this isn't my node, but I was wondering what could be causing the node to not be baked properly. (test_packed_with_string.hda)
Sorry for all the questions, but this is helping a lot.