Jokes aside, this is what we are actually doing in Maxim's studio to render pre-cached particles from houdini in ue5. this is a cool way, but the only problem - cache files are too heavy for production use (spatially, when we have tons of particles and long sims). I love housinis VAT texture exports too.
That's awesome to hear! I see Maxim putting out some VR-related content. Do you exclusively use Unreal for those projects or does it also have a place in other projects? Yes, the caches are absolutely massive. Do you find that VATs give stable results? I experienced a lot of artifacts even with smaller simulations, but maybe I did something wrong
@@DannyLrsn we used to experiment in unity, but for now we are using unreal engine exclusively for all vr/ar related content. Even previewing led installations in vr for galleries. general idea is to have most of the content running in real time in vr. VATs are really tricky. you must think about scale of the scene in GPU float precision manner. and yeah, houdini's vat export is not really good and we have developed custom solution for our needs. baking coordinated in textures is much better solution for gpus, but much more complicated.
@@olegfenkov That's interesting. Whether Unity or Unreal, it's great to see this level of quality coming out of real-time. Are you able to share some specifics about your custom solution? Is it the same idea as Labs' VATs or is it a whole other system? No worries if it's all under NDA.
The tutorial I mentioned is not exclusively a project setup tutorial. Just like this one, it goes through the whole process from export to render of a simulation. The project setup is exactly the same in both so you are not missing out on anything there.
You're welcome! Yes, it's very slow. I think exporting the info to exr texture sequences instead would be way better. Read somewhere that it can be as fast as 1 sec per frame for a 4 million particle sim
Been waiting for a simple pipeline to import 1mil plus particles into Unreal for ages. Seems like nothing yet. Particles are cheap, 10mil or so for water splashes or FX is what I hope for soon. Not for realtime, but just to import and render with ease. All options so far and slow or buggy. They need to just write a Houdini - UE particle plugin. Until then we are always going to do offline rendering with any FX
I have something in the works. It takes a bit of setup time if you don't write a Python script to take care of it. I've tested it with 1 mil particles which exports at around one second per frame. I need to work out some quirks before making a video on it, but hopefully I will get to it soon. I hope as well that there is something in the works from SideFX's side, but for now we will have to make our own solutions
@@DannyLrsn Yeah, im very surprised SideFX has nothing yet. But your solution definitely seems acceptable. Id gladly wait 1 or 10 sec a frame to import particles for feature quality work.
amazing tute! thank you. regarding the file type, it seems like the hipnc isn't opening up in my indie file. do you have a hiplc available? or is there another method? i dont have a perpetual license so i can't do the upgrade.
Glad it was helpful, unfortunately I did this demo on an educational license, so I can't help you there. You can use the project file more as a reference guide to the video
I think you're just using Unreal Engine's MovieRentQ like a renderer like Octane or Redshift, is that correct? Is it too heavy to use as a real-time renderer?
Yes and no. I am using the movie render queue to help increase the quality of the output render. This means that it renders slightly slower than real-time (maybe 1-2 seconds per frame), but Redshift or Octane would need 1-2 minutes per frame. If you want to use this for a game that actually needs to be real-time, check out SideFX's own videos on the Houdini to Niagara workflow. They talk a bit more about how to make sure it'll run well in real-time.
Danny, at min 8:08 you said Motion Blur didn't cause the artifacts. Can you elaborate on what was the culprit then? I'm dealing with the unexpected blurring issue, driving me nuts! Thanks and thanks for the great tutorial!
I honestly don't remember how I arrived at that conclusion. I think it's just a bug when scrubbing the timeline of your level sequence and you won't see any issues like that in the render in the end. Hope that helps!
Thanks for making this. I'm an X-Particles user and trying to get my particles into Unreal. X-Particles can export to bgeo format. Would it be possible to import my bgeo file into Houdini, convert it to Json and export into Unreal the way you're showing here?
@@DannyLrsn X-Particles can export as bgeo and bin data. The bgeo can be imported into Houdini for sure. I was just curious if you knew if Houdini can convert that bgeo data into Json.
@@DannyLrsn It worked partially haha. I was able to get my X-Particles data into Houdini and export via the niagara Rop node. In Unreal my particles don't show up though. If I had to guess, it's probably because the attribute data of native Houdini particles have different names than the attributes from X-Particles so the Unreal Niagara system can't read them properly. Looks like I have to learn Houdini lol. I'm headed over to the Houdini is HIP series to start. Wish me luck man.
It is possible to export camera as FBX. It is also possible to export static or skeletal meshes as FBX. You can't export anything with changing point counts as FBX, and you should not export a particle simulation as FBX. This is a guide in the Unreal documentation on how to get a camera from Maya to Unreal with animation: docs.unrealengine.com/5.0/en-US/import-and-export-cinematic-fbx-animations-in-unreal-engine/
I don't know if it works with this method, but try to set the Niagara emitter to local space and then you might be able to just scale the Niagara system actor in the level
Depends on the effect. It's almost always easier to create it in Unreal since there's less headache going back and forth, but I wouldn't know where to start with an effect like the one I show in this video.
I tried it but it seems that it doesn't support a high level of particles, in my case I have 1.500.000 particles and I can't even import the file to Unreal.
@@Ra00Da I don't have access to Unreal these days, but looking at the roadmap, I don't see any improvements on this area. Feel free to try it out for yourself and see if anything changed :)
@@DannyLrsn Hey just a quick update. I've been using houdini to create point cloud caches for niagara to use but I discovered something quite specific. The colour data doesn't get read properly if you use GPU mode. If in CPU then the colour is all there but the performance is ofc atrocious. I discovered that the GPU mode doesn't ready the blue channel in the RGB cd attribute. I found this out by trying to diagnose it. Did you know this?
@@DannyLrsn the most bizarre thing is that 16 hours ago i wasn't even online, i didn't watched this video because i don't work whit UE5 and i didn't commented this video either... Well, I changed my password and activated 2 factor verification, whoever hacked my account wouldn't be able to do that again
@@DannyLrsn maybe do you know how to work with points? I don't use spheres in my project (I have points). I created a volume. Via VEX I generated a 3D mandelbulb which has more than 340k points with animation of course :D I tried to use alembic but all points are represented like cubes in UE5. I understand that I need to use Niagara. But if I choose a mesh and than choose a sphere than all particles will be missing. I tried to scale them but it doesn't help too. Can you help me? I am stuck on 06:00 and don't know what to do
@@glitchysparx I would keep in mind that a grains simulation isn't spheres. It's points. This workflow only exports points, no spheres. Try to follow the tutorial with this in mind
Amazing tutorial, learning UE for rendering is my next big goal
Thanks for your kind comment. Good luck!
I followed the instructions and it easily worked!
Great to hear!
Thank you So much Danny . ! Helped a lot .
Glad to hear that!
Dear Michael, it's you that make register for youtube, I follow your tutorial from bilibili to your channel here and I'll continue to support
Maybe this message isn't for me, but I appreciate your support!
Bro thank you so much! I’ve had tNice tutorials software for like a year and was super intimidated by all the bars and windows. The way you’ve
That's great! Thanks for your comment!
Fantastic hack! I did everything you showed here and it worked! Thanks a lot!
Great to hear!
this is plain awesome! thank you so much Danny, I'm eager to see more of your tuts!
Thank you! Glad you found it useful. There's another one coming on Monday!
Is there anything you'd like to see a tutorial on in the future?
future! Great tutorial and wholeso community! Stay safe in these tis and keep your heads up! Do what you want that inspires you,
Thanks so much!
thanks so much - super clear, super quick
Thank you!
Amazing tutorial, Danny! Thank you so much!
Thank you, Nick! Glad you liked it
Thank you so much for sharing your experience with us. God bless you .
Thanks for your comment!
Jokes aside, this is what we are actually doing in Maxim's studio to render pre-cached particles from houdini in ue5. this is a cool way, but the only problem - cache files are too heavy for production use (spatially, when we have tons of particles and long sims). I love housinis VAT texture exports too.
That's awesome to hear! I see Maxim putting out some VR-related content. Do you exclusively use Unreal for those projects or does it also have a place in other projects?
Yes, the caches are absolutely massive. Do you find that VATs give stable results? I experienced a lot of artifacts even with smaller simulations, but maybe I did something wrong
@@DannyLrsn we used to experiment in unity, but for now we are using unreal engine exclusively for all vr/ar related content. Even previewing led installations in vr for galleries. general idea is to have most of the content running in real time in vr.
VATs are really tricky. you must think about scale of the scene in GPU float precision manner. and yeah, houdini's vat export is not really good and we have developed custom solution for our needs. baking coordinated in textures is much better solution for gpus, but much more complicated.
@@olegfenkov That's interesting. Whether Unity or Unreal, it's great to see this level of quality coming out of real-time.
Are you able to share some specifics about your custom solution? Is it the same idea as Labs' VATs or is it a whole other system? No worries if it's all under NDA.
Looks Amazing! Thank you!
Glad you found it useful!
Early on, You ntion a tutorial You've made, concerning the content setup. I can't seem to see it in Your description though?
The tutorial I mentioned is not exclusively a project setup tutorial. Just like this one, it goes through the whole process from export to render of a simulation. The project setup is exactly the same in both so you are not missing out on anything there.
Thanks for making this!
I wish Niagra export was faster though, it takes ages for an average particle sim to export.
You're welcome! Yes, it's very slow. I think exporting the info to exr texture sequences instead would be way better. Read somewhere that it can be as fast as 1 sec per frame for a 4 million particle sim
@@DannyLrsn That's a good info!
Houdini render from Redshift to Unreal!! Amazing, can we use this for real time in-game play?
Thank you! Check my response to your other comment :)
Nice tutorial,
Thank you!
Been waiting for a simple pipeline to import 1mil plus particles into Unreal for ages. Seems like nothing yet. Particles are cheap, 10mil or so for water splashes or FX is what I hope for soon. Not for realtime, but just to import and render with ease. All options so far and slow or buggy. They need to just write a Houdini - UE particle plugin. Until then we are always going to do offline rendering with any FX
I have something in the works. It takes a bit of setup time if you don't write a Python script to take care of it. I've tested it with 1 mil particles which exports at around one second per frame. I need to work out some quirks before making a video on it, but hopefully I will get to it soon.
I hope as well that there is something in the works from SideFX's side, but for now we will have to make our own solutions
@@DannyLrsn Yeah, im very surprised SideFX has nothing yet. But your solution definitely seems acceptable. Id gladly wait 1 or 10 sec a frame to import particles for feature quality work.
@@joelbergfx I'll be sure to get it out soon so people can start playing around with it
@@DannyLrsn looking forward!
Thank you for your reply!
amazing tute! thank you.
regarding the file type, it seems like the hipnc isn't opening up in my indie file. do you have a hiplc available? or is there another method? i dont have a perpetual license so i can't do the upgrade.
Glad it was helpful, unfortunately I did this demo on an educational license, so I can't help you there.
You can use the project file more as a reference guide to the video
I think you're just using Unreal Engine's MovieRentQ like a renderer like Octane or Redshift, is that correct? Is it too heavy to use as a real-time renderer?
Yes and no. I am using the movie render queue to help increase the quality of the output render. This means that it renders slightly slower than real-time (maybe 1-2 seconds per frame), but Redshift or Octane would need 1-2 minutes per frame.
If you want to use this for a game that actually needs to be real-time, check out SideFX's own videos on the Houdini to Niagara workflow. They talk a bit more about how to make sure it'll run well in real-time.
Thank you!!!
Danny, at min 8:08 you said Motion Blur didn't cause the artifacts. Can you elaborate on what was the culprit then? I'm dealing with the unexpected blurring issue, driving me nuts! Thanks and thanks for the great tutorial!
I honestly don't remember how I arrived at that conclusion. I think it's just a bug when scrubbing the timeline of your level sequence and you won't see any issues like that in the render in the end. Hope that helps!
Thanks for making this. I'm an X-Particles user and trying to get my particles into Unreal. X-Particles can export to bgeo format. Would it be possible to import my bgeo file into Houdini, convert it to Json and export into Unreal the way you're showing here?
I'm not sure what kind of data x-particles creates, but I guess you should be able to. It's worth trying
@@DannyLrsn X-Particles can export as bgeo and bin data. The bgeo can be imported into Houdini for sure. I was just curious if you knew if Houdini can convert that bgeo data into Json.
@@kickheavy8982 I can imagine you just put the file node loading the bgeo sequence into the input of the Niagara ROP and it should all work
@@DannyLrsn Ah okay. I'll give it a shot thanks man.
@@DannyLrsn It worked partially haha. I was able to get my X-Particles data into Houdini and export via the niagara Rop node. In Unreal my particles don't show up though. If I had to guess, it's probably because the attribute data of native Houdini particles have different names than the attributes from X-Particles so the Unreal Niagara system can't read them properly. Looks like I have to learn Houdini lol. I'm headed over to the Houdini is HIP series to start. Wish me luck man.
can you make a full scene export from Houdini with an animated camera?
It is possible to export camera as FBX. It is also possible to export static or skeletal meshes as FBX. You can't export anything with changing point counts as FBX, and you should not export a particle simulation as FBX.
This is a guide in the Unreal documentation on how to get a camera from Maya to Unreal with animation: docs.unrealengine.com/5.0/en-US/import-and-export-cinematic-fbx-animations-in-unreal-engine/
Thank youuu
Hope you'll get something from it!
Nice
Thank you
How would I make something like a muzzle flash?
How should I scale the entire imported effect? Not the size of individual particles. Do I have to import Houdini to reset the size calculation?
I don't know if it works with this method, but try to set the Niagara emitter to local space and then you might be able to just scale the Niagara system actor in the level
@@DannyLrsnit's work. thanks
Is it easier to "create the particles and put them into unreal" than "create the particles direct in unreal"?
Depends on the effect. It's almost always easier to create it in Unreal since there's less headache going back and forth, but I wouldn't know where to start with an effect like the one I show in this video.
yes
Wow, plz more tuts.
Is there anything specific you would like to see a tutorial on in the future?
@@DannyLrsn Solaris tutorials are scarce. I would really like to see that with your teaching style. Thanks
@@inspirationalgoosebumps6006 That's interesting to hear. What part of Solaris are you interested in?
I tried it but it seems that it doesn't support a high level of particles, in my case I have 1.500.000 particles and I can't even import the file to Unreal.
Right you are! Check out my advanced workflow in another video. Maximum is still 2 mil, though.
@@DannyLrsn Thanks for the advice ❤
@@Ra00Da No worries. Good luck!
maybe we need to try now with UE 5..3@@DannyLrsn
@@Ra00Da I don't have access to Unreal these days, but looking at the roadmap, I don't see any improvements on this area. Feel free to try it out for yourself and see if anything changed :)
ikr!
Is there a reason you're using CPU rather than GPU?
Yes, this method is not available with a GPU sim
@@DannyLrsn Hey just a quick update. I've been using houdini to create point cloud caches for niagara to use but I discovered something quite specific. The colour data doesn't get read properly if you use GPU mode. If in CPU then the colour is all there but the performance is ofc atrocious. I discovered that the GPU mode doesn't ready the blue channel in the RGB cd attribute. I found this out by trying to diagnose it. Did you know this?
how did i get here?
better, but is also more professional
Thank you!
yo must be nice
Also your mind catches more stuff when you're interested
Very true!
@@DannyLrsn the most bizarre thing is that 16 hours ago i wasn't even online, i didn't watched this video because i don't work whit UE5 and i didn't commented this video either... Well, I changed my password and activated 2 factor verification, whoever hacked my account wouldn't be able to do that again
@@Luiz2959 sorry to hear that. Hope your accounts are safe now
Sere the great..
ikr
Fakhri Habibi hamoud
lmao facts
doesn't have sufficient space. Thanks!
If you need help with the space issue, can you elaborate a bit on the problem?
LMFAO good one
lol
Sa lol
mac
Thanks a lot!! Your tutorial helps me so much!
Happy to hear that!
@@DannyLrsn maybe do you know how to work with points? I don't use spheres in my project (I have points). I created a volume. Via VEX I generated a 3D mandelbulb which has more than 340k points with animation of course :D I tried to use alembic but all points are represented like cubes in UE5. I understand that I need to use Niagara. But if I choose a mesh and than choose a sphere than all particles will be missing. I tried to scale them but it doesn't help too. Can you help me? I am stuck on 06:00 and don't know what to do
@@glitchysparx I would keep in mind that a grains simulation isn't spheres. It's points. This workflow only exports points, no spheres. Try to follow the tutorial with this in mind