Houdini to Unity Digital Asset - Floor Creation

This is another Houdini Digital Asset I built for my developers and designers. The tool takes  a curve built in Unity and creates a floor or a ceiling. I started out creating a basic network within a Geo node.

The initial node network above in Houdini. Organization is key when working with Nodes. I have had assets that are just a complete mess, no guidance, no organization, no structure, extra nodes that are not connected to any other node.

Netboxes are a a good way of keeping your networks organized. It is also a great way of planning out how a node netowrk is structured. You can even add colors. Colors! Ok, I like adding colors.

This is what the asset looks like in Unity, once the asset has been built and imported into Unity. The same custom parameters I setup in Houdini are now showing in Unity.

This is what it looks like imported into Unity. 

I use the Houdini Digital Assets to quickly create a design of the floor that I will be creating in the future. This allows me to quickly make changes, assign materials and collision objects when needed.

Houdini to Unity Digital Asset - Column

This posting is for beginners learning Houdini. I figure I will try and post up as much Houdini Game Development for Unity as apossible.

 I needed to find a way to start procedurally building levels in Houdini and bringing them to Unity for my developers. Since I work in a really small studio I needed to give more control to my developers. This will give my developers control over the scaling, transforms, uv scale and with some assets they will have control over the procedural materials.

By no way this is the best way to do this, at least I don't think. I have not discovered a simple way yet, this is just me developing something to help my team in the time alloted.

This is developed using Houdini Engine for Unity. This asset is developed using Houdini 16.5.323 and Unity 2017.3. Don't forget to head over to Sidefx Github and download the Games toolset, it is needed for this HDA. I use the Game Dev Edge Group to Curve node early in the network.

Link: https://github.com/sideeffects/GameDevelopmentToolset

This is what it looks like Unity.

This is what it looks in Houdini. Breaking up the nodes into Network Boxes helps keep everything organized and informs the next user on what is happening in your network. It is not great to receive another HDA and it is really messy, with the user having no idea what is going on within the network!!!!!!!! Just needed to get that out there.

As you can see the Unity version looks cleaner than the Houdini version. Lets look at the first group of nodes. The unity version has eight (8) controls that control Scale, UV Scale, and bevel controls. Transformations are handled by Unity, no need to place an additional transform control unless we are creating cables. That will be a later posting.

Maintenance Platform Texture Update

Finally had a chance to texture this asset in Substance Painter. Great texture program, so much control over your textures.

Quick Update

Waiting on AE render to finish, I though I would post up the UVs to the maintenance platform that I created. UVs were fairly straight forward and easy. I actually enjoy creating UVs for models. Didn't get a chance to texture yesterday, probably finish that up tonight.

Maintenance Platform BG Prop

A new maintenance platform I made today in Lightwave. It took about an hour to finish modeling. I'll start texturing this later on today. I'll use Substance Painter to finish the texturing. I have found it to be extremely efficient to paint quality textures for rendering. UVs were created in Lightwave. I may switch to 3D coat to create quick UVs if the Lightwave ones don't hold up well to texel density. A quick F9 out of Lightwave before I start the texturing.

Sci Fi Prop Image

New image posted in the Images Section. Sci-Fi prop created in Houdini and textured in Substance Painter. Check it out here http://gdbello.blogspot.com/p/images.html

Houdini Hair and Fur Development WIP

Working on my Hair and Fur Houdini tool knowledge this week. A lot of great features that give a great amount of control. I have used other grooming tools for other 3D packages too. I still use those tools. Since we have been using Houdini as our main package, I want to try and keep everything in one main software.

Model comes from Aaron Guiterrez, one of our character artists at work.

***I learned a lot about Hair from abvfx here https://vimeo.com/88711732  Please check out his video about Hair and Fur in Houdini.

Houdini allows a great amount of control through painting maps. You can paint paint Density, Frizz, Frizz Frequency, Frizz Roughness, Clumping, Thickness, and Base Color. This is really helpful when you want to control the amount of hair in certain areas.

Density values are controlled through black to white scale or 0 to 1. Houdini defaults with 2,1,1. I change it 1,1,1.

Houdini Default values

Changed Value

Even the default value for Attribute Create furdensity is set to 1. Changing the value to 0 will allow you to paint the area you want to affect versus painting and taking it away.

Here is what it looks like with my initial furdensity painted for the beard. Using a separate node for the Beard, Hair and Sideburns gives me individual control over how much Frizz. Clumping, Density and Thickness is applied to each part.

In Order: Thickness Map, Density Map, Frizz Map, Clump Map, Frizz Frequency, Frizz Roughness

The eyebrows are part of the beard Node at the moment. This will change later as I want better control for the eyebrows apart from the beard.

Painting the density for the eyebrows. There are a lot of options for painting the density of the eyebrows. You can adjust the opacity of your map, which makes it very nice to adjust the density.

 

My initial layout of the beard, eyebrows, and hair. 

This hair is more uniform and looks like it has been brushed a lot. It also looks like the hair is very thick and coarse. I eventually went back into the hair and adjusted the thickness attribute, fuzziness profile, and fuzziness profile. I also wanted to give  him some dirty dusty hair. I was able to achieve this through the color on the hair material. Adjusting the root to tip blend will adjust the two colors.

Here is what my final hair looks like. 

Still a lot to learn using Houdini 15.5 Hair and Grooming tools. I like using the tools. A lot of control with the air so far. I want to try Braids or rough course hair next.