Community Tutorial: Import VDBs into Unreal Engine 5

General Tutorial & Course Discussions
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Thanks to a recently developed plugin by Thibault Lambert we are now able to start bringing in VDB files into Unreal Engine 5!

https://dev.epicgames.com/community/learning/tutorials/4Vyj/import-vdbs-into-unreal-engine-5

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Tutorial’s out of date.

I cached out a 120-frame, VDB sequence from Maya’s Bifrost (a gun blast). I exported 6 attributes, 5 of which were accepted by UE5 during import:

  • voxel_flame_level_set

  • voxel_flame_speed

  • voxel_fog_density

  • voxel_temperature

  • and voxel_velocity.

Why these? Well, I picked the attributes that seemed closest to what a Maya Learning Channel tutor was picking in his video on VDB exporting. (However, UE5 remarked that 3 of these were “unknown”, and I’ve since learned that it only supports density and level set info.)

Following the developer’s page, I grabbed a VDB Principled Actor. I went into its details tab and started making the changes listed. Unfortunately, there’s no path tracing option, even though I set everything up for that in Project Settings. (I have a GTX card, which may be the culprit?)

Unfortunately, while I can control the color and cloudiness of the VDB, I cannot seem to get in heat info, and hence no fire. According to Winbush, the temperature info in the VDB should provide the firey look. When I bring everything in to the Sequencer, I only get fog density. Nothing for temperature / fire.

If I drag and drop the components directly into the scene, the level set / temperature element appears as a thick, opaque surface. It’s not even close to looking like anything but a brownish, growing dust clump.

I’m out of ideas here. I tried re-exporting the VDB from Maya. I selected only the “known” components when importing into UE5. I tried another temperature component that was “unknown”, just for craps and giggles. Nada. I even tried applying a glowing material to it.

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I’m trying the same thing with similar results and it’s not really working as expected

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@Winbush Thank you for the tutorial. Is it possible to make the imported VDB interacts with spotlights or point lights? I´m using Lumen and lights have no effects on VDB.

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I’m actually speaking with the developer soon on whats new so I can make an updated tutorial as I havent touched it in awhile and he’s been busy with updates since then

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@Winbush Thanks, man!

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after trying the same steps
everytime I pull the element into workflow (after loading into unreal) it is stoppped the program and crash
anyone knows ?
Unreal Engine 5.0.2 with the same version of sparevolumetric

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I put this down since. I just figure it’s a limitation of UE’s VDB import capabilities.