Houdini 16 vertex animation import for UE4

Forums Houdini Engine for Unreal Houdini 16 vertex animation import for UE4

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Clinton Walsh: Member; 8 posts; Joined: Dec. 2015; Offline

Feb. 23, 2017 9:22 p.m.

Hi all,

I have a FLIP simulation on a planet I made and would like to get this going in UE4. I export it with the vertex_animation_textures node in Houdini 16 and that gives me a normal exr, position exr and a mesh. I then import those into UE4 and copy and paste the Soft Vertex Animation code into a UE4 material and assign the textures. When I finish all of that the animation completely breaks.

I attached 3 pictures which show the mesh with no material (water_01), the mesh with the material (water_02) and the material network (water_03). I have tried using a number of different nodes in my network as the Export Node with similar results. I must be doing something wrong but I am not sure what. I have also attached my hiplc file. I also have Houdini Engine installed in UE4.

An ideas?

Attachments:
water_01.png (1.5 MB)
water_02.png (1.1 MB)
water_03.png (230.1 KB)
terrain_01.hiplc (3.7 MB)


lkruel: Member; 240 posts; Joined: Nov. 2012; Offline

Feb. 23, 2017 9:39 p.m.

Hey Clinton, the file you sent has some missing textures so I can't recreate what you're trying to do.

But one thing to keep in mind is that the SOFT technique only works for meshes that keep the same topology all the way through. For something with changing topology you want to look at the FLUID technique.

Let me know if that helps and thanks for trying this feature out!

The other thing to note is that you have to hook up the textures to the materials as well. Usually this is done by making a Material Instance of the material and hooking up your textures there.

If you can zip up the textures I can try taking a look at it,

Luiz

Luiz Kruel
Senior Technical Artist
SideFX


Clinton Walsh: Member; 8 posts; Joined: Dec. 2015; Offline

Feb. 23, 2017 11:27 p.m.

Thank you for the quick response.

I have tried the Fluid technique and received an error saying I had insufficient memory. I have tried it with very few particles and low texture output resolution but still got the same error.

My system specs are:
Intel 15-3570K
Nvidia GTX 660ti
8GB of RAM

I have attached a zip file with the Houdini file and textures you need for it.

Attachments:
Water_Export.zip (644.9 KB)


lkruel: Member; 240 posts; Joined: Nov. 2012; Offline

Feb. 24, 2017 11:36 a.m.

Thanks for the files. I found the bug, basically the model is really large and I'm doing some volume conversion to scatter the triangle cloud points. So it's taking too long and eventually blowing out of memory trying to create such a large volume. I'm working on a fix that will scale the mesh down, scatter points, then scale it back up and that should work.

As a workaround you can try scaling the mesh down a tad. The proper fix will be in with the version 2.0 of the tools which I'm hoping will be out in the next couple of weeks

Luiz

Luiz Kruel
Senior Technical Artist
SideFX


lkruel: Member; 240 posts; Joined: Nov. 2012; Offline

Feb. 24, 2017 12:30 p.m.

Here's the asset running in UE4 after the fix. I can send you the HDA privately if you'd like to test it, I'm still working through some updates on the Unreal shaders but I'm hoping to have everything done soon.

Edited by lkruel - Feb. 24, 2017 12:31:59

Attachments:
water_planet.gif (985.7 KB)

Luiz Kruel
Senior Technical Artist
SideFX


Clinton Walsh: Member; 8 posts; Joined: Dec. 2015; Offline

Feb. 24, 2017 1:31 p.m.

Thank you so much for the fast and amazing work you are putting into this. If you could send me the HDA that would be awesome. I will also try the scaling down the mesh and simulation when I get home from work.


foxhuntd: Member; 2 posts; Joined: Oct. 2016; Offline

Feb. 26, 2017 10:34 p.m.

Have the same problem with vertex animation tool.


lkruel: Member; 240 posts; Joined: Nov. 2012; Offline

Feb. 27, 2017 10:11 a.m.

Hey everybody,

Try this HDA, it has slightly better comments and a few bugs fixed.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/lmoe4b7tvyskaiv/vertex_animation_textures.hda.zip?dl=0 [dropbox.com]

Let me know if you run into issues, and thanks for trying it out!

Luiz

Luiz Kruel
Senior Technical Artist
SideFX


Ilya Kuzmichev: Member; 2 posts; Joined: March 2014; Offline

Feb. 27, 2017 3:05 p.m.

lkruel
Hey everybody,

Try this HDA, it has slightly better comments and a few bugs fixed.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/lmoe4b7tvyskaiv/vertex_animation_textures.hda.zip?dl=0 [dropbox.com]

Let me know if you run into issues, and thanks for trying it out!

Luiz

Hi. Same problem here.

I did test FLIP sim, with version 16.0.531 it looked like on fig. 1 (exploded vertices)
With asset in your post it looks like in fig. 2 (normals looks broken)

Edited by Ilya Kuzmichev - Feb. 28, 2017 08:01:43

Attachments:
Capture.PNG (195.9 KB)
Capture3.PNG (369.8 KB)


Clinton Walsh: Member; 8 posts; Joined: Dec. 2015; Offline

Feb. 28, 2017 8:49 p.m.

I have a similar issue to the first picture Ilya posted. Below is a picture of the mesh that is exported and the material setup. The vertices do not seem to be attached and the material makes everything shake a little bit.

I am not sure which node I am suppose to be exporting in Houdini but I tried every node in /obj and got similar results.

Attachments:
waterMesh.png (1.3 MB)
waterMaterial.png (505.1 KB)
houdiniExport.png (1.0 MB)


lkruel: Member; 240 posts; Joined: Nov. 2012; Offline

March 1, 2017 1:57 a.m.

Hey Ilya,

That's getting closer, make sure that the setting for packed normals on the shader, match what your setting is in Houdini. We have an optimization to pack the normals into the alpha of the position texture, but if you export the normals it should be off.

Clinton,

Try the unreal code from the new HDAs, they are commented a little bit better. You have a couple of nodes that aren't wired to the proper place.

Let me know if those things work out

Luiz

Luiz Kruel
Senior Technical Artist
SideFX


Clinton Walsh: Member; 8 posts; Joined: Dec. 2015; Offline

March 1, 2017 8:31 p.m.

Hi Luiz

I copied the Fluid Vertex Animation UE4 Code, from the HDA in the dropbox download from above, into a material in UE4 and got the results below. It looks like what I had earlier.

Attachments:
unreal_ShaderGraph.png (399.1 KB)
houdini_ShaderCode.png (398.9 KB)


lkruel: Member; 240 posts; Joined: Nov. 2012; Offline

March 13, 2017 7:03 p.m.

Hey Clinton,

I just released an updated HDA with an Unreal project with the source assets

https://vimeo.com/207832662 [vimeo.com]

Check it out and let me know if those work better for you

Luiz Kruel
Senior Technical Artist
SideFX


limbicnation: Member; 10 posts; Joined: June 2016; Offline

May 26, 2017 6 p.m.

Hello, Any idea how to get this up and running with shader forge in Unity?


mikelyndon-sesi: Member; 394 posts; Joined: May 2017; Offline

May 27, 2017 10:56 a.m.

I will be submitting unity shaders with a setup video on Monday. I'll post a link here when it's ready.

Mike


limbicnation: Member; 10 posts; Joined: June 2016; Offline

May 29, 2017 6:35 p.m.

mikelyndon-sesi
mikelyndon-sesi

Thank you!


mikelyndon-sesi: Member; 394 posts; Joined: May 2017; Offline

May 30, 2017 11:28 a.m.

And it's live! Download the shaders from GitHub - https://github.com/sideeffects/GameDevelopmentToolset/tree/Development [github.com]
And there's a basic setup tutorial here - https://www.sidefx.com/tutorials/unity-shaders-for-vertex-animation-export-tools/ [www.sidefx.com]
If you run into any problems let me know.

Mike


limbicnation: Member; 10 posts; Joined: June 2016; Offline

May 30, 2017 7:18 p.m.

Awesome! Unfortunately the Link to the setup tutorial is dead.

Edited by limbicnation - May 30, 2017 19:20:31


mikelyndon-sesi: Member; 394 posts; Joined: May 2017; Offline

May 31, 2017 9:57 a.m.

Link should be working now. Sorry about that.


limbicnation: Member; 10 posts; Joined: June 2016; Offline

May 31, 2017 1:12 p.m.

Awesome! Thank you so much for sharing this Mike!
Cheers,
gero

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