Hello !
This is my first post here. I'm new to Houdini and i'm following this video of Alex Dracott where he shows how he built a terrain.

Well, i'm stuck … i don't understand how to apply a uv to the terrain that i generated. i'd like to test it further in c4d, try things etc ..
the obj exported doesn't feature a uv map. And i can't export the diffuse from the quickshade node after i had fun modeling the terrain.

this is the video i'm following : https://youtu.be/VZnrQCu9-bg?t=1642 [youtu.be]

Thanks for your help.

You are converting the height field to a polygon surface to export to C4D… You can apply a UV Texture SOP and project uv's down the Y axis to create the uv's then export the polygon surface.

The HeightField Quick Shade SOP is an HDA Houdini Digital Asset. The HDA is basically a wrapper around an actual material for Mantra with texture map slots. You can dive in to the asset and look at how the material is created to set up a similar material in C4D.
From a brief look at the material inside the HeightField Quick Shade HDA, you supply textures which are using height fields as masks, then are simply summed up and added over a base texture map. You can generate texture maps from the height fields in COPs and then rebuild the setup in C4D.

If you want you can just bake out a set textures using the Material Bake Texture ROP as applied to the uv polygon terrain rendered through the HeightField Quick Shade SOP.

Thanks Jeff ! That’s looks really complex for a beginner like me.
As a start, how can I create an UV texture SOP to generate uv’s please ? i mean, you explained it but … well i should try and see if i'm stuck. isn't it possible to fully unwrap the uv's rather than to project them on Y axis ?

“The HDA is basically a wrapper around an actual material for Mantra with texture map slots. You can dive in to the asset and look at how the material is created to set up a similar material in C4D.”
I’m sorry, it’s a bit advanced for me, do you have an example perhaps ? i could send my scene if needed.

“From a brief look at the material inside the HeightField Quick Shade HDA, you supply textures which are using height fields as masks, then are simply summed up and added over a base texture map. You can generate texture maps from the height fields in COPs and then rebuild the setup in C4D.”
Yes, I’ve made some quick textures in the quickshader node. But I’m not sure to understand how to generate them in a COP.

“If you want you can just bake out a set textures using the Material Bake Texture ROP as applied to the uv polygon terrain rendered through the HeightField Quick Shade SOP.”
Well, ok I’ll try this material bake texture ROP node, applied to the output of a quickshade node, if I’m correct.

Thanks very much

Following!

i didn't find out how to do, too bad.

Another Houdini beginner here, I've managed to download the terrain tools from the game development assets but I have no idea how to import them to the shelf/workspace so that they can be used as in this tutorial:

https://vimeo.com/246884463 [vimeo.com]

This supposedly should solve the problems I and the users above have but I'm really stuck here.

Can anyone lay out how to install the HDA assets in a simple way?

https://www.sidefx.com/tutorials/game-development-toolset-overview/ [www.sidefx.com]

1st link should help.

One thing I noticed is, whenever I update my toolset by using the left most button…it hangs..unless I use VPN and connect to a US server…then it works fine..some sort of geo preferential treatment ? dunno…but it works everytime with US server.

Can any one help me out, how can I export texture from heightfield_Quickshade node?????? I have attached the screen shoot in the following.

I would also like to bump this. It is not at all clear how to extract the texture. Am I conceptually missing something? How do you get the quickshade color data exported as a texture? Is there a UV associated with the heightfield I can use? Do I need to convert the heightfield into a polygon mesh first? This seems like it should be an obvious next step but I can't find a good explanation anywhere. Thanks

After spending far too much time on this problem, this is what I have learned. (Please correct me if I am wrong, I am a noob at Houdini)

1. Heightfield is not a polygon, so you need to convert it to a polygon first if you want it exported as such. This is what is being suggested above however I cannot find all the Nodes that are being referred to so perhaps they are from an older version?

2. This is far less obvious how to handle for beginners then people posting seem to think.

3. A Heightfield is fundamentally different from a polygon and you can think of it as a single mask (height) that is being converted into visualization of height in the viewport.

4. If you want the textures, there is no “actual” texture on the heightfield, just layers of masks which each have a single base texture. I think this is why the confusing circular discussion is going on between people asking for help getting the terrain UV and Houdini folks posting solutions that don't seem to have anything to do with UVs. There is no UV on a heightfield, it is just flat textures masked out by different layermasks.

5. Following from the points above, there is also no UV map, it is just a stack of masks (basically) so there is no texture to export.

6. I am trying to export to Unity and this video ( https://vimeo.com/269918208 [vimeo.com] ) did a a good job of explaining the steps for getting the heightfield out as a png. There were at least a dozen tiny finicky settings to set to simply export a png of the heightmap that I have not seen mentioned anywhere else in any of the dozen open threads on this topic I have found.

6b. This was also similar : https://www.artstation.com/gdebello/blog/jwyZ/houdini-terrain-heightmap-into-unity [www.artstation.com]

7. For my case (Unity) I also need to import it directly into a Terrain as it is just exported as a PNG heightmap not a polygon mesh.

8. Splitting the terrain using the hf split node easily split the terrain itself but seems to break the texturing (I was also following the same tutorial by Alex and he just sort of vaguely references the output node). It seems like there should be a way to fix this but I am lost for now.

9. When I was able to export as an OBJ I had all sorts of strange artifacts and still no idea of how to get a UV or texture so I gave up on that route.

10. Using non square heightfields is a no no. As is splitting a terrain by 1*n tiles (at least for the game shelf tools, this resized my terrain incorrectly).

11. “If you want you can just bake out a set textures using the Material Bake Texture ROP as applied to the uv polygon terrain rendered through the HeightField Quick Shade SOP”

I could not find the Material Bake Texture ROP. Has this been renamed or am I just dumb and missing it?

Hopefully someone can chime in that can help us noobs understand where we went wrong or share a link to a tutorial. Also, I have looked at

Im also relatively new to Houdini and Heightfields, but I think your explanation of the different between heightfields and polygons is accurate, I have needed to "convertheightfield" node to turn to polys before applying UVs, exporting, etc.

The Material Bake ROP, Im not familiar with. But the "heightfield_output" has allowed me to export any relevant maps that I've generated in Houdini as EXRs.

vusta
https://www.sidefx.com/tutorials/game-development-toolset-overview/ [www.sidefx.com]

1st link should help.

One thing I noticed is, whenever I update my toolset by using the left most button...it hangs..unless I use VPN and connect to a US server...then it works fine..some sort of geo preferential treatment ? dunno...but it works everytime with US server.

I'm not sure of your location but I was able to use my VPN to connect to Europe, Philippines, and India with no issue downloading. Not sure why you have an issue. Its odd for sure.

Considering im building with python to texture a Heighfield , how will you sample in COP the result of the texture layering of my x diffuse map injected with the material builder? As houdini apparently can't handle more than 10, each time i have more than 9 differents texture materiax index , i have to create another pile of 9 and build the mask alpha to blend...

How could i bake the all thing?