Great video for the community. Thanks for preparing this. I've been using this workflow for a while. So I want to add something. You might have some problems after importing alembic files to UE. Sometimes meshes lose their quality. To prevent this, you can use the minimum value for "Compressed Position Prescision" parameter in import options.
wow I'm truly thankful that you made this tutorial! I come from a Houdini background and this video helps me so much in transitioning to a Houdini + Unreal workflow
As a result, I have subscribed to your TH-cam channel in the hope of seeing more tutorials like this one, since combining these two is critical to getting better results. TNX.
@@DannyLrsn this combination of houdini and unreal engine is super interesting, anything along this lines will be appreciated. In particular myself I am having issues exporting vellum grains simulation to unreal engine (how I found your tutorial, unfort didnt help me with the issue) Anyway, your editing is impeccable and I am looking forward to more
@@amandeepsangwan0077 render settings are definitely on the list as I glanced over them for the sake of speed here. Maybe materials can fit into that somehow
@@DannyLrsn I want to see something in particular sir. The same way groups are used to make material slots or adding collision meshes, there is some way for the engine to interprete groups as physic material layers?
prismaticdev goes through that topic on the video below, but is as complex and long as the traditional method, a true pain in the ass. Should be awesome if there is a way to skip this process using houdini. th-cam.com/video/nFgiyUkr8J4/w-d-xo.html&ab_channel=PrismaticaDev
@@DannyLrsn Building setups in Houdini then use UE as a render engine, I know its a bit tricky but I believe there are so many stuff doable with small tricks. for me the most annoying part is to waste so many hours waiting for render to be done , and I believe UE5 can help us a lot .
@@omidmehdipour4912I have a tutorial coming tomorrow which goes over an advanced workflow for exporting Houdini particle sims to Unreal Engine. Hope you'll find that useful You're right! UE can save a lot of render time and still provide good quality if you use it correctly.
Thank you for this tutorial I learned a lot :) *subscribed * Is it possible to render HQ fluid and particle sim in UE5 ? I've seen people render niagra particles but not particles directly from houdini and no Fluid sims, am I just looking in wrong places or is it not technically supported right now ?
That's great! As far as I know, it's not possible yet. Unreal is getting closer and closer to being able to deal with fluid sims, but it would still be too heavy with any method I know of.
This is great. One question. With Alembic cache because you are essentially rendering single frames is there any motion blur at all when you render with Temporal Samples?
Thanks! I'm not sure if Unreal manages to interpolate velocity if you have a consistent point count. Otherwise, if you calculate velocity in Houdini and keep the v attribute, you can import "motion vectors" in the alembic cache import window of Unreal. Hope that helps!
Does the this export method only work for vellum? I've got a keyframe animation with rbd physics and a fluid sim and i want to export it as one whole thing. Is that possible?
this is a pretty beginner question, but I finished the same Entagma tutorial and in your video at 0:30 how are you getting the uv and Cd attributes? Is it something with a uv node you added to the tubes?
Hey, no worries. Yes, I just made sure to give the tubes UVs before simulating. If you want to check out how I did it, my project files are available in the description for free.
hey man, great tutorial, any idea why unreal wont import my alembic file of a RBD simulation? I read somewehre it might be because I have faces with more than 4 vertics, but I'm not sure of how to clean that from the rbdmaterialfracture results. any tips you can give?
Thank you! I think you explained it yourself. Houdini has a "Divide" node that can triangulate meshes for you. Maybe use that on the results on the rbdmaterialfracture?
You're welcome! Whenever you try to look for the "same" feature between two different packages, there are often a few key differences. The answer to your question depends a bit on what you need it for, specifically. Unreal, by default, instances things like foliage, and it does it really well. In my experience, it's much nicer to work with than it is in Houdini / Redshift. You can basically instance any static mesh this way, but it's mainly used for foliage. Unreal has Niagara, a particle simulation system, which can instance meshes onto particles. It can handle millions of particles and millions of mesh instances. Nanite is a new system in Unreal for dealing with large amounts of triangles. There are demos of people instancing spheres up to the point of 100 million triangles. A huge difference for all of these to something like redshift proxies is that you don't really have an option to "hide" them until render time, and, in most cases, you don't need to. You'll still be running 40FPS and reaping all the benefits of real-time rendering. Let me know if that answers your question!
@@DannyLrsn Thanks for explaining it clarify somethings I really appreciate it! But I was thinking specifically this about RS proxies. I mean make an animation in Houdini then save that as is a proxy then import that one animated mesh into UE then use that to spawn into object. th-cam.com/video/S9Ccta-6YC8/w-d-xo.html
@@everydayfitness3004 It's hard for me to tell from that video what purpose RS proxies serve. From what I understood, it's a system that allows you to instance geometry onto just a single point, right?
@@DannyLrsn Yes that's it. So he creates different animations of different flowers then save those into RS Proxies then he uses them to into points randomly.
@@everydayfitness3004 Okay! I've seen a feature in Niagara called "mesh flipbook" or something like that, but I have not looked at it at all so I have no idea if it works like I expect. You can look into it, but I have no idea if it will be what you need. Maybe one day I'll get around to looking into it. In the end this might be one of those situations where Unreal is still a game engine so it's not geared to handle many high quality animations at the same time.
You can download the project files from the link in the description to check for yourself, but vertex is the safest because that's what it gets converted to inside Unreal at import.
As far as I know, it only works better for packed non-deforming geo. So you could use it for an RBD sim. But I haven't looked into it that much so let me know if you have different experiences using FBX to export Houdini sims
Just a tiny bit of criticism here. Almost every single sentence you made a few very tight cuts and even cut off some words here and there. No "rest" moments anywhere, which makes it feel very rushed and unnatural.. anyway, lots of great tips and tricks, thanks for explaining all of this, very useful.
I appreciate the critique and see your point. I'll definitely be more careful about cutting off words at the end of sentences. Glad you found it useful regardless!
Great video for the community. Thanks for preparing this. I've been using this workflow for a while. So I want to add something.
You might have some problems after importing alembic files to UE. Sometimes meshes lose their quality. To prevent this, you can use the minimum value for "Compressed Position Prescision" parameter in import options.
That's good to know. Thank you for sharing!
This is fantastic! Please keep these Houdini / UE5 tutorials coming!
Thank you! New tutorial coming in a couple of hours
this is one of the best all around unreal engine tutorials I’ve seen, thank you!
Thanks so much for your kind words!
wow I'm truly thankful that you made this tutorial! I come from a Houdini background and this video helps me so much in transitioning to a Houdini + Unreal workflow
Thank you for your kind comment. I'm glad to hear it was useful for you!
As a result, I have subscribed to your TH-cam channel in the hope of seeing more tutorials like this one, since combining these two is critical to getting better results. TNX.
Thanks so much! I will be sure to elaborate further on this in a later tutorial.
Awesome!! thanks for the great tutorial, combining UE5 and Houdini feels like a magical combination for the future
Thank you, Tim! It really does. Can't wait to discover more!
good stuff, you're gonna be a great educator!
Thanks friend!
wow. One small step for and a giant leap for unreal houdini community. im saving this tutorial 🙌🏿🙌🏿
Thank you for the kind words!
This is super helpful thank you so much for these h to unreal workflow videos - Much needed content!
Thanks for your comment, Mark. I'm glad to hear you found it useful!
very helpful, quick and concise. 10/10
Glad to hear that! Thanks for the comment
thank you so much
amazing! thank you
Glad you found it useful!
Wow, you're a very talented explainer
Thanks so much!
This is a really good tutorial. good work!
That's great to hear. Thank you!
amazing tutorial
Thank you!
Bless you!
finally finally thank you so much for sharing
you're welcome!
Great One. Thanks for the video
Thank you!
thank yo bro! I got it all!
Good to hear! Make some cool stuff!
very good content, well explained at a good pace - please, we need more
Thank you! More is coming soon. Is there anything specific you would like to see in the future?
@@DannyLrsn this combination of houdini and unreal engine is super interesting, anything along this lines will be appreciated.
In particular myself I am having issues exporting vellum grains simulation to unreal engine (how I found your tutorial, unfort didnt help me with the issue)
Anyway, your editing is impeccable and I am looking forward to more
@@Aguiraz that's perfect! Grains is the next thing I'm covering as it is a bit of a different workflow
So great, this content i need
Thank you!!
good works!
Thanks so much!
looking forward to get more lessons from u.
Thank you! Let me know if there's anything particular you'd be interested to see
@@DannyLrsn yess. I will
well paced, on point and easy to understand
waiting for moar videos
That's good to hear! Having seen this video, is there anything in particular you would like to see covered moving forward?
@@DannyLrsn procedural materials would be cool and maybe more about render settings.
@@amandeepsangwan0077 render settings are definitely on the list as I glanced over them for the sake of speed here. Maybe materials can fit into that somehow
@@DannyLrsn I want to see something in particular sir. The same way groups are used to make material slots or adding collision meshes, there is some way for the engine to interprete groups as physic material layers?
prismaticdev goes through that topic on the video below, but is as complex and long as the traditional method, a true pain in the ass. Should be awesome if there is a way to skip this process using houdini. th-cam.com/video/nFgiyUkr8J4/w-d-xo.html&ab_channel=PrismaticaDev
Let's GOOOOOOO!
Woooo
Surprising👍☑
Thank you!
this is awesome, please do more tutos like this( from Houdini to UE)
Thank you! What would you like to see in a Houdini to UE tutorial?
@@DannyLrsn Building setups in Houdini then use UE as a render engine, I know its a bit tricky but I believe there are so many stuff doable with small tricks. for me the most annoying part is to waste so many hours waiting for render to be done , and I believe UE5 can help us a lot .
@@omidmehdipour4912I have a tutorial coming tomorrow which goes over an advanced workflow for exporting Houdini particle sims to Unreal Engine. Hope you'll find that useful
You're right! UE can save a lot of render time and still provide good quality if you use it correctly.
@@DannyLrsn Thanks man! that would be awesome, really appreciate it.
@@DannyLrsn Do you by any chance have a discord channel or any other way so we can ask our questions there?
Thank you for this tutorial I learned a lot :) *subscribed *
Is it possible to render HQ fluid and particle sim in UE5 ? I've seen people render niagra particles but not particles directly from houdini and no Fluid sims, am I just looking in wrong places or is it not technically supported right now ?
That's great!
As far as I know, it's not possible yet. Unreal is getting closer and closer to being able to deal with fluid sims, but it would still be too heavy with any method I know of.
There's a plugin called FluidFlux, maybe what you're looking for. Not the same quality as Houdini, but is realtime.
This is great. One question. With Alembic cache because you are essentially rendering single frames is there any motion blur at all when you render with Temporal Samples?
Thanks! I'm not sure if Unreal manages to interpolate velocity if you have a consistent point count.
Otherwise, if you calculate velocity in Houdini and keep the v attribute, you can import "motion vectors" in the alembic cache import window of Unreal.
Hope that helps!
Does the this export method only work for vellum? I've got a keyframe animation with rbd physics and a fluid sim and i want to export it as one whole thing. Is that possible?
It is possible. The only thing to keep on mind is that the larger the file size of the .abc, the harder it will be for unreal to run it
this is a pretty beginner question, but I finished the same Entagma tutorial and in your video at 0:30 how are you getting the uv and Cd attributes? Is it something with a uv node you added to the tubes?
Hey, no worries. Yes, I just made sure to give the tubes UVs before simulating. If you want to check out how I did it, my project files are available in the description for free.
@@DannyLrsn ah very interesting. It looks like you used the uv attribute tab in the sweep node, and then you added a uv texture for the caps
hey man, great tutorial, any idea why unreal wont import my alembic file of a RBD simulation? I read somewehre it might be because I have faces with more than 4 vertics, but I'm not sure of how to clean that from the rbdmaterialfracture results. any tips you can give?
Thank you!
I think you explained it yourself. Houdini has a "Divide" node that can triangulate meshes for you. Maybe use that on the results on the rbdmaterialfracture?
@@DannyLrsn thank you Danny, got that fixed :)
@@EliRezik Awesome!
I get this error when i import to UE5
"Error: Unable to import mesh due to a face consisting of 5 vertices, expecting triangles (3) or quads (4)."
Make sure your mesh consists of all quads or triangles. One way to do this would be to drop down a triangulate before your alembic ROP.
@@DannyLrsn hey thanks for helping! I just did that but still got the failed to load popup
@@TRABITY If "failed to load" is all it tells you, I don't really know what that's about. Let me know if you figure it out, though!
Will this work with custom texture uv materials from fbx files?
Hii, bro my unreal engine crashes while importing alembic file with 'flatten tracks' feature off
do you know how to solve this problem??
Awesome! thanks. I have a question? Is it posible for Unreal to have Proxies? Like RS Proxies?
You're welcome!
Whenever you try to look for the "same" feature between two different packages, there are often a few key differences. The answer to your question depends a bit on what you need it for, specifically.
Unreal, by default, instances things like foliage, and it does it really well. In my experience, it's much nicer to work with than it is in Houdini / Redshift. You can basically instance any static mesh this way, but it's mainly used for foliage.
Unreal has Niagara, a particle simulation system, which can instance meshes onto particles. It can handle millions of particles and millions of mesh instances.
Nanite is a new system in Unreal for dealing with large amounts of triangles. There are demos of people instancing spheres up to the point of 100 million triangles.
A huge difference for all of these to something like redshift proxies is that you don't really have an option to "hide" them until render time, and, in most cases, you don't need to. You'll still be running 40FPS and reaping all the benefits of real-time rendering.
Let me know if that answers your question!
@@DannyLrsn Thanks for explaining it clarify somethings I really appreciate it! But I was thinking specifically this about RS proxies. I mean make an animation in Houdini then save that as is a proxy then import that one animated mesh into UE then use that to spawn into object. th-cam.com/video/S9Ccta-6YC8/w-d-xo.html
@@everydayfitness3004 It's hard for me to tell from that video what purpose RS proxies serve. From what I understood, it's a system that allows you to instance geometry onto just a single point, right?
@@DannyLrsn Yes that's it. So he creates different animations of different flowers then save those into RS Proxies then he uses them to into points randomly.
@@everydayfitness3004 Okay! I've seen a feature in Niagara called "mesh flipbook" or something like that, but I have not looked at it at all so I have no idea if it works like I expect. You can look into it, but I have no idea if it will be what you need.
Maybe one day I'll get around to looking into it. In the end this might be one of those situations where Unreal is still a game engine so it's not geared to handle many high quality animations at the same time.
is your Cd set to point, prim, or vertex?
You can download the project files from the link in the description to check for yourself, but vertex is the safest because that's what it gets converted to inside Unreal at import.
@@DannyLrsn Thank you.
Can collision be added to Alembics?
As far as I know, no. I could be wrong so let me know if you find a way to!
@@DannyLrsn Cool, thanks! I will :)
Is not fbx format better for sims?
As far as I know, it only works better for packed non-deforming geo. So you could use it for an RBD sim. But I haven't looked into it that much so let me know if you have different experiences using FBX to export Houdini sims
@@DannyLrsn Thanks for ur kind reply. I didn't know that difference to be honest. I still learning.
@@carlosrivadulla8903 That's cool! You never know with Unreal. It works in weird ways sometimes
Just a tiny bit of criticism here. Almost every single sentence you made a few very tight cuts and even cut off some words here and there. No "rest" moments anywhere, which makes it feel very rushed and unnatural.. anyway, lots of great tips and tricks, thanks for explaining all of this, very useful.
I appreciate the critique and see your point. I'll definitely be more careful about cutting off words at the end of sentences.
Glad you found it useful regardless!