In this one, you will learn how to create a mesh that is known by many names like, swooshes, soulercoasters, trailmeshes. In the tutorial, we'll build a tool (digital asset) that allows us to generate these meshes inside of Unreal Engine 4. If you're interested in trying Houdini Engine, this is a good starting point. I'll take you from an empty Houdini scene, to a finished mesh with an animated material with a whole load of awesome controls!



You can download the scene files used in this video here! It includes an annotated .hip file, all .uassets, texture (.png and .psd) and a Readme file. 

 Software Builds Used

Houdini 16
Unreal Engine 4.15
Photoshop CC 2017

CREATED BY

ANDREAS GLAD

Andreas has spent a third of his life as a VFX artist in the games industry working on games of all shapes and sizes. From gritty explosions in Battlefield 1 to whacky powerups in Disney Universe He recently realized that there is a despicable lack of educational material for realtime vfx so he decided to try and do something about it. In both his work and tutorials he strives to live by KISS (Keep It Simple, Stupid). Finding simple solutions to hard problems has become an addiction and it's the reason he's neck deep in Houdini. He's currently freelancing for some of the biggest names in both games and VR.

More from Andreas Glad

COMMENTS

  • Eavenz 7 years, 4 months ago  | 

    Amazing tutorial, as usual, thanks! :)

  • Thunderbeast 7 years, 3 months ago  | 

    A great tut! As always, easy to watch and doesn't bore you with monotone content. Keep it up!

  • admullen 6 years, 8 months ago  | 

    Can anyone recommend a way to append this to work in Unity

  • JohnDraisey 5 years, 10 months ago  | 

    So sick. The ramp parameter is going to be really useful for my race track HDA.

  • Rhuan 4 years, 11 months ago  | 

    Awesome!!! :)

  • Mortensensei 4 years, 8 months ago  | 

    Great tutorial but I'm having trouble in Houdini 18. With the new Sweep node, how would you control the scale of the curve using the profile you'd set in the Null CONTROL node? The new sweep node allows you to control scale via a ramp but I would like to use a ramp that's controlled outside the node.

    • Mortensensei 4 years, 8 months ago  | 

      Figured a workaround! You can use a Point Wrangle on your backbone curve to adjust @scale or @pscale. I referenced a ramp in my Null "Control" node and used a curveu attribute generated from a Resample node as the lookup for the ramp. I bet there's a better way but this let me recreate what's going on in the tutorial. Hopefully this can help somebody else get pointed in the right direction :)

      Great tutorials again, they've been a huge help.

      • Partikel 4 years, 8 months ago  | 

        Sorry, I missed this comment! Yeah the changes are a bit annoying, but they compensated by including the Labs Curve Sweep node which is pretty much my whole setup and then some. So if you need to revisit this setup some day, I'd look at that!

  • davidkimber 4 years, 8 months ago  | 

    Yeah, getting hung up on the old Sweep node referenced here. Trying to muddle through but hitting a lotta' roadblocks.

    • Demno 4 years, 8 months ago  | 

      Hey! Yeah it's changed a bit and I've stopped using Sweep. They've integrated pretty much my whole setup (and more!) in the Labs Curve Sweep node so I just use that now.

      • Partikel 4 years, 8 months ago  | 

        Ha! I was logged into my old account. Woops.

  • precursore99 4 years, 8 months ago  | 

    please update for houdini 18

    • Partikel 4 years, 8 months ago  | 

      I'd recommend downloading Houdini Labs. In that package there's a new node called Labs Curve Sweep. It contains the whole setup and more and it works in 18 so you can dive inside and see how it was set up.

  • CitrusCryptid 1 year ago  | 

    Need an update for Houdini 20, Im less familiar with houdini and the sweep node looks exactly the same as the labs one. no idea what to do. when i edit the curve beyond the very first point for the scale, nothing happens.

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