Rajat Goswami

Providing an update to this. As of Houdini 19.5/20, the ROP FBX node now features a "Compute Smoothing Groups" toggle parameter. Ensuring your geometry has vertex normals present (e.g. using the Normal SOP node), enabling this toggle parameter will save smoothing group data to your FBX. Importing the same FBX to UE5 should no longer cause the "No smoothing group information was found in this FBX scene!" warning.

This toggle can also be found in the FBX Character Output and FBX Animation Output nodes.

Drasko Ivezic
Are there established workflow scenarios for working with FBX exports intended for game engines? One might assume that conversion is straightforward, but I'm curious: have earlier challenges, like the intricate setup of blend shape animation curves not being integrated with the animation ROP, been addressed?

As an aside from the discussion on APEX taking place,

in H20 we've introduced a few more export options as well as a new Export Preset dropdown to the FBX Animation Output and FBX Character Output ROPs. Users will be able to select a "Maya" or "Unreal Engine" preset that sets these export options to the ideal values for exporting data to a particular DCC/game engine (e.g. by setting the correct axis system, computing smoothing groups etc).

Over time we hope to add more export options that address pain points for exporting to a particular app or game engine, making it easier to move data between them. If there's a bug logged for the blendshape animation workflow you mentioned I'd be happy to take a look.