INSTANCING BY PARAMETER | UE4 | UNITY

Learn how to create a standalone Houdini Digital Asset containing multiple Houdini object (OBJ) nodes inside.

In Houdini

1. Install, instantiate, and unlock the Instancing_ObjectInstancingByParameter_Start.hda example in Houdini.
2. Go inside the Instancing_ObjectInstancingByParameter1 node in the network editor.
3. Uncheck the blue flag on the yellow_starfish node to hide it. We only want to see the instances. We do not want to see the original starfish.
4. Press Tab, type instance, and press Enter.
5. In the instance1 node's parameters, go to the Instance tab.
6. Set Instance Object to ../yellow_starfish. Note, it's important that it is a relative path to the torus node because the asset can be instantiated with different names.
7. Set Point Instancing to Full point instancing.
8. Go inside the instance1 node.
9. Delete the add node and create a Grid node (using the Tab menu).
10. For the grid1 node, set Primitive Type to Points and reduce its rows and columns to 4 by 4.
11. In Houdini's top-level menu, click on Assets > Save Asset > Instancing_ObjectInstancingByParameter.
    

In Unity

1. Go to Houdini Engine > Load Houdini Asset... and find your Instancing_ObjectInstancingByParameter_Start.hda asset.
2. You should see a bunch of starfish in the Scene view.
3. If you expand the Instance_ObjectInstancingByParameter1 > instance1 object in the Hierarchy, you'll see a bunch of yellow_starfish objects being efficiently cloned.
   

In UE4

1. Right-click in the Content Browser and select Import to....
2. Find your Instancing_ObjectInstancingByParameter_Start.hda and import it.
   
3. Drag it from the Content Browser to the Viewport.
4. You should see a great starfish formation.