I'm trying to work out a workflow for importing Houdini-created procedural meshes, based off data points pulled from .CSV file (updated every x seconds, data pulled from the web - for data visualisation purposes), into Unreal Engine and rendering in real time. The temporal stepping of the data (say it updates every 5 secs) would also need to be averaged out as well. Ideally I could use Houdini Engine to update the asset from the Unreal side (and potentially feed the CSV data into the HDA on that side as well), though would that update fast enough?

I'm a bit stumped as to how to do this. I know Unreal can also read external data files in this way and update live without a hitch. But of course that would mean creating the procedural geo in Unreal... which doesn't even compare to Houdini's functionality. If i could build a HDA that could interpret the data then that could work, but Houdini Engine updates in editor time only as far as I know (not real time?), but I don't know if it would update quick enough to capture the latest refresh of .CSV data. At best I assume the HDA would update in a glitchy/stepped way and probably out of sync with the csv data refresh as well, so I'm not sure about this route.

Would love to hear anyone's ideas for a workflow that would solve this problem!

The problem of interpolating between the synced data points is slightly less important for now, though if there are any ideas on that too, I'm all ears.