Yi Jin

RobW
HI,

Just to ask the obvious, did you use the Unity nameformat for the static and animated bones FBX files?

So static+bones is e.g. pig.fbx, the animated bones FBX should be pig@nameofanimationcycle .fbx (see the @ inbetween?)

If you do pig.fbx and walk.fbx, it will not work, as Unity will see these files as separate entitites.

If you did, no idea atm what went wrong

rob

Thank u again RobW, after several day's keep testing everything possibly related, I've finally discovered what's the wrong with the exporting work.

I noticed that after the FBX was exported, Houdini automatically created a folder with _fpc suffix attached to its name, which contains a .mc file and a .xml file, approved to be a pack of point cache files. It can be recognized well by both Maya and Max. What's more, the bone system is also recognized by them, but within the exported FBX file, the deforming imformation of the model is based on this point cache file, but not the bone system - Seems the skin-based deformation is not supported by Houdini. Sadly, point cache animation is not supported officially by Unity now.

Seems that Houdini's deformation method is not skin-based like Maya and Max. I failed in this test work finally. Maybe I'm trying to do more than Houdini can do, or maybe Houdini animation is not designed for game engine and game developing pipelines, but I still wish in later version Houdini can support bone-and-skin based deformation in FBX exporting.

Thanks very much to everyone here who advised and instructed me!

Best Regards.

Terry Jin

Could anyone give a further instruction?

Best Regards, TerryJin

goldfarb
put the .shelf tool in your $HOME/houdini17.0/toolbar directory
then in Houdini you should be able to add it to one of the existing shelf sets.

Thank u very much Goldfarb! And also many thanks to @friedasparagus! the shelf tool works, and I've achieved partially success while exporting.

Speak in detail.

1. The FBX generated from the shadow_rig tool can be recognized by Unity now, and it's controller hierarchy is (I assume) correct. I compared it by another animated character FBX created in Maya and exported to Unity and happily see their hierarchies are the same.

2. Also, the animation take contained in this pig FBX, whose bones created in Houdini (recognized as controllers in Unity and have the right hierarchy) have keyframes that can be seen in Unity's Animation window (I made the bake constraints operation on all my bones before exporting).

But the geo still remains static, seems that the deforming information still cannot read by Unity.

I tried RobW's method of export 2 FBXes, one is static bone system together with geo, the other is merely the baked bone system. Anim takes of both also have keyframes, but both are static in Unity's animation preview window.

I also tried several operation combinations in the output node such as enable Force Skin Deform Export and Export Deforms as Vertex Caches, and several combinations among them, no luck. I've searching for all day but still cannot find a method for solving this last problem.

I tried import this FBX to Maya, all is ok. Seems Maya can read the FbxCacheExport correctly.

What shall I do next?