Hi everyone!

We are pleased to inform you that we have decided to make the Alpha 3.1 build of Houdini Engine V2 for Unreal Engine public.



We saw a comment on the forum by the user that goes by the alias FFD, who suggested we start the Beta just in time for the Houdini GameJam to make use of the large number of users using the plugin and therefore help us test it out. We are not quite ready yet for Beta, but we think enabling users to try the Alpha 3.1 would be immensely beneficial to both SideFX and its community. We therefore invite you to try the new plugin for the GameJam!

You can expect some big enhancements to UX, Features and Usability of the plugin. Find the Github link below for a full list of features in the Alpha. Please note that this build is not yet representative of the Beta and Final release we plan on revealing more about in the future.

Some key features in the Alpha we want to highlight:

• New and redesigned core architecture, more modular and lightweight
  
• Operations like cut and paste, move between level, duplicate etc have been rewritten to ensure stability of the plugin.
  
• Static Mesh creation time has been optimized and now uses Mesh Descriptions.
  
• World composition support
  
• Ability to create foliage instances directly without baking
  
• World inputs can now read data from BSP brushes.
  
• World inputs can now import data from all supported input objects
  
• World inputs can now import data from an actor placed in a different level than the Houdini Asset Actor's
  
• A single curve input can now create and import any number of curves.
  
• HDA parameters and inputs editing now support multi-selection.
  
• Brand new UI, including improved support for several types of parameters including folders.
  
• PDG Asset Link support.
  
• Session Sync support.
  

See the Full List [www.sidefx.com]

We have also recorded a video to show you how to install the plugin in your GameJam project:


We would also like to request from you, the community, to report any issues, questions or concerns on this forum post.
Download: https://github.com/sideeffects/HoudiniEngineForUnreal-v2/releases [github.com]

A few extra information regarding the current Alpha:

It is important to note that Version 2 is not backward compatible with version 1 of the Houdini Engine for Unreal plugin.
To that extent, it is important that you use version 2 of the plug-in only with projects that do not contain version 1 assets.
However, the Houdini Digital Assets themselves (the HDA files), that were created for version 1 of the plugin are fully compatible with version 2.

- The Alpha is linked with the latest H18 production build, H18.0.532.
- Do not mix version 1 and version 2! bad things will happen if you do.
The alpha shall be used on a fresh/clean UE4 project.
- With that in mind, be careful when installing Houdini, as enabling the unreal plugin on the current installer will copy the v1 files in unreal as well (in the engine)…

The current alpha has almost all the version 1 features, so the current plugin's DOCS [www.sidefx.com] also applies to v2.

Details on some of Version 2's new features can be found in the repo's wiki [github.com], but v2 doesn't have its own documentation yet.

Should I uninstall the Version 1 plugin before intalling this?

I've been using the Houdini Engine v2 in UE4 for the game jam. I have procedural stairs that I created in Houdini and they are working as expected. I can control them via manipulating a curve there. When I import this asset into UE4, the curve's control points seem to be rotated by 90 degrees, so when I try to use this curve, the mesh then snaps to the curve points and a bunch of the normals get flipped.

I've tried using the curve to invert the stairs, rotating the points themselves, but nothing gets it to work like it does in Houdini.

As a side note, I also noticed the when I had one of the template flags toggled on in my node network, it caused the curve in UE4 to disappear completely. It then would import just the mesh.

I've been having fairly good luck with the new plug-in, however it seems to get hung quite often. I've been experimenting with the Game Jam Boolean Edge Damage HDA and it's been hanging after ever few operations - to the point where I need to kill Unreal Engine and start over. The last hang happened when checking & un-checking the ‘Keep World Transform’ option in the HDA.

FYI - I found that my project in Unreal 4.25.3 won't package up if you have the new plug-in installed as outlined in this example video. I tried removing the Plugins folder from a clone of the project and it appears to be working it's way through the packaging process now.

@BxHBxH: Regarding the packaging issue, are you using the latest alpha of v2? (3.2)
Could you share the packaging log files with the errors with us?

Same thing regarding the plugin hanging, could you share UE4's logs when the hang happens ?
I'll try to repro that on my side…

@Moody bear: I guess you're using editable curve nodes?
You could try using a curve input instead as a workaround.

@Sukmadi Rafiuddin: Yes, that's what I meant by v2 not being backward compatible with v1.
If you intend on reusing a v1 project (which I don't recommend), then you should destroy/remove all v1 actors/components, delete the v1 plugin, then install v2.

Just installed this and playing around with it now.

Is there any documentation for how World Composition support has been implemented? Hoping that it might be able to solve some of the technical hurdles I've been having with large terrains.

@alexstachelek Version 2 currently is very limited regarding docs.

The best we currently have is on the repo wiki's “what's new” page:
https://github.com/sideeffects/HoudiniEngineForUnreal-v2/wiki/What's-new-%3F#world-composition [github.com]

There's some basic explanations on how to set this up.

dpernuit
@alexstachelek Version 2 currently is very limited regarding docs.

The best we currently have is on the repo wiki's “what's new” page:
https://github.com/sideeffects/HoudiniEngineForUnreal-v2/wiki/What's-new-%3F#world-composition [github.com]

There's some basic explanations on how to set this up.

Great thanks, have managed to start getting it to work. Looking forward to the beta/final release of this.

The two different links are really confusing. The Github UI is also really confusing.
Also the "release" button is not really obvious/visibile.
It would be nice, if this can be a lot clearer next time to share download links.

It tooked me a while to figure out, that the "non released" version are the wrong one. Of course they did not work.

The released version works fine. But finding the download link, was sadly pretty hard. Iam not familiar with GitHub at all and we use different version control software in our company. Just as a small feedback, it would be really awesome if you just provide the direkt links of the plugins on your website/posts, so non github user don't fall into a file depression


https://github.com/sideeffects/HoudiniEngineForUnreal-v2 [github.com]

https://github.com/sideeffects/HoudiniEngineForUnreal-v2/releases [github.com]

Greets Phil