Hello everyone, I would like to show off my Houdini pipeline plugin I’ve worked on for the last couple of months. It is capable of executing any Houdini project that uses my custom Houdini nodes for input and output.
Its purpose is to artify white boxed levels in Unreal, with the power of Houdini. The power of this plugin is that it’s modular, imported assets consist of small modules to give artists and level designers full control over them.
The modules are all parented and grouped with each generated asset (for example, a building), so that the whole asset can be selected and transformed as wished.
How does it work?
Level designers white box their level with a custom actor that holds the attribute for asset type, by setting the asset type the designer defines what type of asset they expect from Houdini.
After they’re done with white boxing, they have to select the boxes they want to artify, and execute the plugin. After execution, the plugin asks which Houdini project to execute, and after selection of the Houdini project, execution will start.
The Houdini execution is done in a command prompt, and after successful execution, the assets are imported and white boxes are hidden.
Why should I use this?
The purpose of this plugin is to quickly set dress an entire level, or one particular area, without the need of artists, or manual placement of assets.
This allows level designers to make quick iterations of their level by artifying the whole level or parts of it in a fraction of time that would otherwise take.
Here’s a video where I white box a level, generate assets with the plugin, make iterations in design, and play the game, all done in a time period of 20 minutes (excluding the time to build lighting).
Do keep in mind that the art side is not fully done yet and am only able to present the generation of parks and buildings, although the plugin itself is capable of generating any asset delivered by Houdini.
I’m not planning to release the plugin yet, but will consider releasing it if there is enough interest by you guys.
Please feel free to ask questions, I will happily answer them.