# How can I spawn animated skeletal actors at scattered points (Houdini -\> Unreal)?

**URL:** <https://forums.unrealengine.com/t/how-can-i-spawn-animated-skeletal-actors-at-scattered-points-houdini-unreal/1244503>\
**Category:** Character & Animation\
**Tags:** unreal-engine, question\
**Created:** [July 30, 2023, 6:35am UTC](https://forums.unrealengine.com/t/how-can-i-spawn-animated-skeletal-actors-at-scattered-points-houdini-unreal/1244503 "2023-07-30T06:35:56Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![benttoenail](https://d3kjluh73b9h9o.cloudfront.net/original/4X/2/8/5/28502927f1d97ba1051b3b47ccfe17233bf41ef0.png) [@benttoenail](https://forums.unrealengine.com/u/benttoenail)\
**Post date:** [July 30, 2023, 6:35am UTC](https://forums.unrealengine.com/t/how-can-i-spawn-animated-skeletal-actors-at-scattered-points-houdini-unreal/1244503/1 "2023-07-30T06:35:57Z")

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To reiterate the title, I’m looking for a way to spawn skeletal actors on points specific points created in Houdini. I need to place multiple instances of a plant like creature across a landscape, and I don’t think I can use the foliage tool in this case, because the plant was rigged and carefully animated.

I’ve looked at possibly using HDAs (Houdini engine for Unreal), but it looks like I can only spawn static meshes. I’ve tried using vertex animation textures and Niagara, but I can’t get the points from Houdini to stay put.

The final product is going to be a linear animation, so all of this needs to take place inside the sequencer. Real-time optimization is not an issue.

Any ideas?

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**Author:** ![SupportiveEntity](https://d3kjluh73b9h9o.cloudfront.net/original/4X/2/8/5/28502927f1d97ba1051b3b47ccfe17233bf41ef0.png) [@SupportiveEntity](https://forums.unrealengine.com/u/SupportiveEntity)\
**Post date:** [July 30, 2023, 11:57pm UTC](https://forums.unrealengine.com/t/how-can-i-spawn-animated-skeletal-actors-at-scattered-points-houdini-unreal/1244503/2 "2023-07-30T23:57:53Z")

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Hey there @benttoenail! Welcome back to the community! I’m not a Houdini magician myself, but if you can export the points out to the correct coordinates, just knowing the correct transform would make it easy to make an editor widget that will spawn whatever you need wherever you need it.

For example I had written up this simple script to take some data and place it at specific transforms, which with a little tweaking you could get all of the locations, the place the SKMs automatically.

> [@Automatic Actor placement](https://forums.unrealengine.com/t/automatic-actor-placement/664578):
>
> Automatic Actor placement Hallo, I’m looking for an automatic Actor placement script that would place my meshes into the Viewport/Outliner based on a CSV file. I’d like to use Editor Utility Blueprint for this. Not a Blueprint actor that you place into viewport and it draws objects after you run game. I need something that will save me time with the manual actor placement into the scene so I can continue to edit it. I have used BluePrint Structure to import the CSV file. This is how my examp…