I'd like to share a small package I made with you, called Geometry Sequence Player. It allows you to bring mesh and pointcloud / particle animations from Houdini to Unity! Here as an example, I created a small surfing game prototype, with a wave animation imported from Houdini:
The animations have to be exported as mesh or pointcloud sequences, where each frame is stored in a seperate file. After a short conversion with an integrated tool, they can then be played back inside Unity. Mesh sequences can also have per frame textures! The package features Editor player controls, Unity timeline integration and a full C# scripting API and runs on almost any platform, including all Desktop systems, Android, iOS and XR.
But that's what VATs are for!
Indeed, the package mostly covers the same functionality as Vertex Animation Textures
However, I found VATs to be quite involved and finicky at certain times. So the approach of this package is simple & stupid, but in return pretty robust and with quicker iteration times. And it even runs with Houdini apprentice! The only drawback is the rather large file sizes, so for games where small installations are important, I'd not recommend the package at the moment!The package is free and open-source for non-commerical applications, check it out on Github [github.com]! For commercial use, or if you want to support the development, you can also get a copy on the Unity Asset Store [assetstore.unity.com]
If you've used the package, I'm super interested in hearing about your experiences, and also any suggestion for improvements or features that you might want to see, as I'm myself not a Houdini-Pro!