Official Labs Vertex Animation Textures 3.0 FAQs and Links

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Hi,

I am using VAT 3.0 to export a RBD sim to Unreal 4.25. The provided material functions from any release of SideFXLabs 18.0, 18.5 and up don't seem to work in 4.25, despite that there are material functions provided for this version of Unreal.

The vertex position seems to be read correctly, but the WPO breaks when the vertex rotation is added in the material function.
This results in a incorrect result compared to the simulation.

I've tried nearly all material functions and versions of VAT in releases that I could find (HoudiniEngine github, SideFXLabs github) etc but am making no progress. Are there some pointers as to what version of Labs as well as Houdini FX I should use for 4.25?

Thanks
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I've only recently started looking into VATs and have a very simple Unreal question regarding Houdini Engine Plugin vs SideFX_Labs Plugin content.

There are VAT material functions in both plugins and I'm wondering what the history of those is and which one should be used.

For example for soft body VATs there are these:
HoudiniEngine/Content/MaterialFunctions/MF_VAT_Soft
Vs.
SideFX_Labs/Content/Materials/MaterialFunctions/MF_VAT_SoftBodyDeformation


I'm assuming the Houdini Engine versions are holdouts from the first version of Houdini VATs and no longer applicable. Since the baked results only work with the SideFX_Labs material functions that seems like a safe assumption, I'd just like to be sure. I would also suggest removing the legacy functions from future houdini engine releases. Or clearly marking them as deprecated/legacy in the future to avoid this confusion.

If they're already clearly marked and I missed an obvious readme section then I appologize, at least this way the information can also be found in this thread.
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mwacker
I'm assuming the Houdini Engine versions are holdouts from the first version of Houdini VATs and no longer applicable.

I reached the same conclusion, I've seen others making the same mistakes since then so I agree with this!
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Hello, I am currently using VAT 3.0 and trying to export a fluid animation into UE 5.1

My question is if dynamic remeshing will get any type of frame interpolation support, or if it is available if I can get a little help on how to get started or find some documentation in the matter I would appreciate it.

I need interframe interpolation as my simulation is on my characters arms, and when the game goes >30FPS my sim doesnt interpolate good.

Thank you in advance
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Hi there,
I'm using VAT 3.0 in Unreal 5.0.3, I'm using the softbody deformation VAT as well as the rigid VAT.

For the softbody VAT I'm having an issue where many of the vertices on my model are "jittering" around by small but very noticeable amounts frame to frame, and I have confirmed that they are definitely not doing that in Houdini.
I had a feeling it may be some kind of floating point precision error, but the overall scale and world position of my animation is not very large at all (any geometry is maybe max about 20m from the world origin at any time).
I am exporting VAT textures as HDR .exrs, I tried turning on Use Full Precision UVs on the mesh, and I tried changing the Embedded Data Rounding on the material instances, but none of those seems to have any effect on the jittering.
I've tried this on multiple meshes in 2 different project files now, and the same thing happens in all of them..
is it a precision limitation of the VAT workflow?
Or does it sound like something isn't working correctly? ..in which case do you have any suggestions of what I can try next?

Thanks for any help!
MC
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Hello, I am using VAT 3 and unity 2021.3.16
Vertex animations works in windows desktop mode in editor but not with IOS.
Is there any solution for this?

Thank you
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为什么我的液体有三角面效果表现
Edited by 458182172 - Feb. 27, 2023 02:31:31
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Hello every one

I am newbie Houdini user .

For our game i was testing the VAT character export.

I used Houdini test object but whenever i tried to export i had this issue

Setup is quiet simple jut added the charater i coverted it than chached it

Houdini version 19.05 Indie licance

Attachments:
vat_02.png (863.6 KB)

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Hi everyone,
I've been trying to make SideFX Labs VAT work with Unity for a while.
What's a version combination that works for you? What's your Unity version and what's your SideFX Labs version?
Thanks in advance.
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Hello, I am facing problem. When shading VAT FLip my VAT is accompanied by artifacts in the form of triangles, can you tell me how to solve this problem?

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Снимок экрана 2023-07-16 190202.png (2.9 MB)

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I'm using Unity 2021.3.21f1 with VAT3 and I've not been able to correctly playback any mesh animation, including the VAT demo.
Is it still supported?
I have tried it on PC and Android build settings, same jumbled result.
Edited by sdplkw2391 - Aug. 14, 2023 20:20:20

Attachments:
20230814_204000_houdini.png (308.2 KB)
20230814_204422_Unity.png (78.3 KB)

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Is there a way to export rigid bodies with multiple materials using VAT?
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Some strange problem with motion blur in unreal engine 5.3 and 5.2.1. This is blueprint, if without blueprint everything works fine.
Edited by unitmotion - Sept. 22, 2023 10:18:42

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GIF 2023-09-22 2-44-41 PM.gif (12.7 MB)
Screenshot 2023-09-22 144731.png (179.2 KB)

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Notice it is good stuff around motion blur inside unreal engine 5.3.1
[twitter.com]
https://twitter.com/tempkinder/status/1697788896380412035 [twitter.com]
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So my problem is Vat works if its small enough. But if its bigger then it seems like its outside bounding box or something else. Just like the problems mentioned in the post before this. So my question is how should I tackle this problem? In example small sphere works but not big sphere. How should I approach this to make it work? I do have a solution where I scale down the big sphere and then scale it up in unity and problem solved. But I want to make it work without scaling. How is the right way to address this one?
Edited by PeterHam - Oct. 19, 2023 06:32:10

Attachments:
Vat_Problem.mp4 (829.2 KB)
vat_problem_screenshot.jpg (237.9 KB)
Vat_inside_Houdini.mp4 (758.9 KB)
Vat_Debugging.hiplc (709.4 KB)

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Hi, I followed every step of VAT 6 | Particles, but during the last step, when I apply the VAT_Sprites_Inst material, the object becomes invisible. Could you please help me figure out where I might be going wrong?
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Is there any solution for Why does my fluid sim via Dynamic Remeshing mode have flickering normals?
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Hi i also have a problem with the normals (Unreal), there is some kind of interpolation going on:

For both i just output the WSVertexNormals inside the BaseColor, VAT works great otherwise.

First one is using a ROP FBX second one is the fbx outputed by the LABS VAT.
Edited by LaurentNovac - Nov. 2, 2023 07:30:30

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Capture.PNG (1.1 MB)
Capture2.PNG (1.7 MB)

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Hello,

I'm using VAT to export skeletal animations from a "FBX Character Import" node with the VAT Mode set to "Rigid-Body Dynamics" for Unity. A character/animation imported with "FBX Character Import" already comes with a transform matrix point attribute. I'm struggling to convert this information into something that the VAT tool will recognize though, so I'm completely disregarding it and creating the Orient attribute differently.

Since a skeleton is just a bunch of points, what I'm currently doing is that I use "Copy to Point" to copy a generic rectangular prism as packed primitives to all skeleton points. I'm doing this twice, once on the rest position and then another time on the actual animation.

Then, I use "Extract Transform" with these 2 "Copy to Points" and I can export something that mostly works, but there are some bones that occasionally glitch. I'm guessing that this is caused by the "Extract Transform" not working perfectly with certain bone angles.

Since the "FBX Character Import" node comes with a transform matrix already, I'm guessing that if I could somehow use that attribute directly or indirectly by doing a conversion, I could get a flawless texture that doesn't glitch 1 frames out of 100, but I just can't figure it out.

So here's the question: How can I convert the bone "transform" matrix attribute into the "orient" attribute that I need for a Rigid-Body VAT?

And before anyone tells me that I should be using Soft Body instead of Rigid, the reason for this is that I want to have different characters with different topologies be compatible with the same vat textures and my method actually works. It's just that the texture is glitched during certain frames.
Edited by Dabitto - Jan. 25, 2024 18:50:18
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marcosreguemez97
Hello, I am currently using VAT 3.0 and trying to export a fluid animation into UE 5.1

My question is if dynamic re-meshing will get any type of frame interpolation support, or if it is available if I can get a little help on how to get started or find some documentation in the matter I would appreciate it.

I need interframe interpolation as my simulation is on my character's arms, and when the game goes >30FPS my sim doesnt interpolate good.

Thank you in advance

I'm with him. I'm trying on my end, by replicating some of the nodes used for soft body vat. No luck so far. Any advice or experience on this would be amazing. Thanks
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