Houdini Engine Plugin Dev for SideFX
Posted on February 21, 2024 • 2 minutes • 367 words •
Table of contents
I had the amazing privilege to work with SideFX as a developer on the Houdini Engine plugin for Unreal between 2021-2023, across UE4 and UE5 spanning Houdini versions from H18.0 to H20.5. The following sections list some of the features that I worked on as part of the SideFX Houdini Engine dev team.
HoudiniTools & Presets system in UE5
The HoudiniTools for the Houdini Engine v2 Plugin for Unreal is a reimagined version of the original Houdini Shelf tools. For the new version I aimed to solve collaborative workflow issues from v1, make it easier to manage HDAs inside and also support a flexible and easy-to-use HDA Presets system.
UE4 Landscapes / World Composition
My work involved expanding upon the Landscape Actor support and extend it to support input/output of Streaming Landscape Actors, static mesh instancing, foliage instancing as well as the input/output of terrain Edit Layers and Paint Layers.
KineFX Skeletal Mesh & Animation Support
I worked on the SkeletalMesh and AnimationSequence HDA inputs and outputs. Having had significant prior experience with rigging and animation in both Unreal and Houdini/KineFX, I was able to devise flexible workflows for the KineFX integration.
BSP Brush Support
Utilizing the Unreal Editor’s BSP Brushes, users can block out geometry using Unreal’s BSP Brushes and use them as HDA inputs. I repurposed the Unreal Editor’s internal BSP codebase and adapted it for the Houdini Engine plugin which allowed us to bake down selected BSP brushed to static meshes prior to passing to the HDA.
HoudiniAsset Blueprint Component
The goal for this feature was to add Blueprint support for Houdini Assets in the form of Actor Components. Add multiple HoudiniAssets to Blueprints as Actor components. Blueprints could essentially be used as a rudimentary presets system, containing multiple HDAs.
Talks & Presentations
The aforementioned features can be found in the following Houdini / Houdini Engine related talks/presentations:
Houdini Engine for UE4 | Simon Verstraete | Houdini 18.5 HIVE - BSP Brushes, World Composition, Blueprint Support.
Houdini 20.0 Keynote - HoudiniTools & HDA Presets.
Houdini Engine for Unreal: The Road Ahead | Damien Pernuit | GDC HIVE 2023 - Skeletal Mesh & Animation / KineFX support.