Hi, I'm switching between 3d, Maya and now I'm working in Houdini to find a decent workflow rigging game characters. Next-generation characters with cloth,belts and armour with a facial rig. I've managed to set up a simple biped rig in Houdini but how do I set up eyes, tongue, jaw/mouth etc?

I've been following many paid tutorials on this system, one tutorial mentions never use Houdini facial or auto rig as it's not meant for game engines, is this true?

How come there aren't many tutorials on this subject within Houdini, is it best to forget Houdini when it comes to character rigging for games? can somebody point me in the right direction for tutorials on how to set this up?

I'm working with Houdini and unreal engine. Please help if you can.

all the best
Montana

You should be able to follow along with most basic face rigging tutorials in Houdini.
give it a try and if you get stuck just post your WIP and we'll help you out

thanks for the reply, im gonna stick with maya for a bit until more facial tuts come along. Houdini isn't there yet for characters IMO

Moin,

> Houdini isn't there yet for characters

bold claim. I'd say: Game engines aren't there and probably never will be - so who's right? :-P

OK, you did add

> IMO

… so, fair enough.

Thing is: Houdini has been there for quite some time. It's just that there isn't any “rigging for game engines”. A rig, even today, heavily depends on how your specific system wants to drive it - I am just mentioning bones versus joints here, even if both are “connected” (sorry, couldn't resist) and from my perspective are actually interchangeable. Academic discussion, I know.

Like Michael says, you can easily transfer almost any rigging tutorial into Houdini almost out of the box. That doesn't mean that “it will work in game-engine xyz”. If you only want to transfer animations, that's easy enough (export an FBX and that'll do it, most of the time) - if you want a RIG to work, you will, most of the time, need to do some work in your game engine of choice to make use of the weight maps, the bone/joint structure, the FK/IK setup. It is absolutely doable and it makes perfect sense to set up your own pipeline.

What I suggest is: Make sure you know what you want/need. A “rig” is just a catch-phrase, it doesn't tell you much about what you actually need to use. Once you know what you want to use (you are talking about “next-gen”, a term that I am not familiar with, so I cannot imagine what you might need), it doesn't really matter whether you use Blender, Maya or Houdini or whatever to CREATE that asset.
Try to use a tutorial only as a starting point for your own work. Reproducing what a tutorial shows you won't get you far (plus, it probably doesn't show you anything about “next-gen” anyway). Try to apply the tech you copy&pasted from a tutorial on your own - I am pretty sure that most Maya (facial rigging or other) techniques work astonishingly similar in Houdini.

Marc