Hi.
I'm trying to bake a level that contains instances. Some are Instanced Static Meshes (because the instanced mesh only has 1 LOD), others are Hierarchical Instanced Static Meshes (HISM), (because the instanced mesh has multiple LODs*)
After baking to Actor, the actors with HISM are empty: the number of instances is zero.
See attached images for reference

I really can't figure this out even after reading the help over and over. Help would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you.

I'm on Houdini 19.5.569 and UE5.1.0


*from the help help [www.sidefx.com] :InstancedStaticMeshComponent or HierarchicalInstancedStaticMeshComponent, the latter based on having LODs or unreal_hierarichal_instancer == 1

Hi again,

I've tested this in a simplistic project with the most basic HDA (please reach out if you want the files, too heavy to upload here). The results are the same. When baking HISM (here the cone, it's got LODs) to Actor, all the instances disapear. Baking only works for ISM (here the beach balls, they don't have LODs). See the before and after images below
Before baking



After baking





I found a work around but it is quite unstable on big scenes. First I add the "unreal_foliage = 1" attribute on all my instancing points. Then I bake a first time as "foliage". Then I bake a second time as "Actor". Then I clear the instancing actors that are empty (HISM) and the redundant ones (ISM). But that's far from ideal.

I would greatly love some help and documentation on this.

The absolute best would be for SideEffects to provide simple example files for all types of export/instancing/usage of special attributes etc. and more documentation about the baking process.

Thanks to Matt who responded to my bug report, this was fixed by updating to the latest version.