I'm trying to do something which should be pretty simple.

I have 1,000 points and they move from 10 to 0 in Y at random rates. I need to export these animating points in the FBX format and import them into Unreal.

Each point has a grid attached, none of the points have any dynamic properties and do all of their motion via a wrangle node.

All of the data lives in one object at the sop level, nothing is looking for channels etc. Point counts do not change.

Is there a simple way to import this deforming geometry into Unreal? I've seen the discussions re: Fractured Objects and exporting them with bone deformers. Is this really necessary? And if so, how would I go about doing so in my setup?

A brief description of my setup would be:

Scattered points > attributeWrangle (for motion) > point vop (for some animated noise) and then > copy sop that attaches grids to each point. 8 nodes in total.

Thank you

I looked this up before posting and what I found led me to a page that's no longer available:

http://git.techartadventures.com/sburrichter/realtimevfx-shelf [git.techartadventures.com]

I tried adding the Realtime-VFX shelf in Houdini but it doesn't show up under the listed options. I also tried making the shelf myself and adding the scripts manually but couldn't find the scripts I needed.

Hey there!

That shelf actually got rolled into this: https://github.com/sideeffects/GameDevelopmentToolset [github.com].

For vertex animations, I do have a tool called “Vertex Animation Rig” under the Cloth section of the shelf set in that toolset. You definitely don't need to create a fracture for this.

If you select the last SOP node in the chain, click that tool, it should generate everything needed (1 bone per point, the keyframes, skinning, and the final deformer). All you'll need to do is export the /obj/FBX_RESULT node to FBX and you'll be good to go.

Not sure what engine you're using, but I only got this to work with UE4.11. For whatever reason, it doesn't work with UE4.10 and lower. It should work fine in Unity and other engines though!

Hope this helps!