NVIDIA GameWorks Integration

Thanks a whole bunch !

Why hello there, I’ve started grooming out some hair assets for Hairworks and I’ve run into some… problems.

For information;

  • Using 's merged branch of 4.9.1
  • Using a retargetted skeleton/animation set to ā€œSkeletonā€ in the skeletal mesh
  • Exports from the Hairworks viewer and the Hairworks plugin in Maya have identical results.
  • Rig is the standard A.R.T. Rig
  • Hairworks viewer works fine, cannot load asset settings in UE4

It almost looks like the skinning is just… off, but I have no idea what is actually going on. I might just be dumb.

Thanks in advance for any assistance given! :slight_smile:

Make sure u have not applied any type of scaling to the hair or the growth mesh (mesh used to spawn the hair) in your modelling package (reset any scale), and do the same for transformation. Make the pivot point at the origin. I too have had some issues with skinned hair where it looks fine in the viewer but not in UE4. usually its just trial and error until it works, but I have found translation/scale can cause issues.

After making a clean blueprint, it seems like it comes in rotated 90 degrees +X, which is strange in and of itself. went over the Maya files, everything is as you said, no translations, rotations, or anything.

The second any animation is applied it stretches, as if the growthmesh is beeing animated wrong.

Does it matter if there is an apex cloth file attached to the same skeletal mesh?

Hi, i tried to unzipp files directly in C:\ and i can’t finished unzipp UnrealEngine-4.9.1_NVIDIA_Techs.zip or UnrealEngine-4.9.2_NVIDIA_Techs.zip…i suppose that’s why i can’t finish to download dependencies. The file i can’t unzipp is ā€œCannotimplementinterfaceblueprintā€ … could you tell in which folder it is ?? may be i can extract it manually and then move to the right folder.
Thanks regards.

Ok i achieve to extract in C:. I will try to download dependencies … my mistake was to extract in another disk instead of C:. So i guess it doesn’t work in another disk.

I love u for updating ur branch ,it tried it myself but never got it to compile in 4.9.2 (guess i made a dumb mistake>.<),its working fine now i can also package <3

hola amigo yo logre que todo me saliera bien colocando los archivos en otro disco…! lo que si es que tube que extraer con zip y extraer aqui no en otra carpeta…! eso ami me ayudo espero que sirva de ayuda…! ahora voy por una instalacion limpia de NVIDIA GameWorksa (v4.9.2)

looks like you have scaled your character first and then activated the hair right?, first put the character ( dont change the scale) and then put the hair and then scale them together… is how i did it with my Peach character ://imgur/r987W4V 3Ds


if you are using multiple hairworks, use the box collision so the hairworks wont dissapear

There’s no scaling going on anywhere, I’m afraid, not in Maya, nor in UE4.

I just completely remade my growth mesh from scratch, which resulted in… exactly the same thing. I’m going to try one more thing, which is altering the retargetting in the skeleton from Skeleton to Animation in persona, to see if that does anything.

If – doesn’t work! then I dont know that will.

EDIT: - And that didn’t work either. So the only option remains remaking the rig, I suppose.

I’m not sure about Maya, as I dont use it, I know for a fact that it works using 3dsmax. Also in UE4 make sure the hair component is attached to the skeletal mesh component (drag and drop onto the skeletal mesh component). Otherwise in Maya, check your export options, mess with Up Axis and Handedness

That sounds interesting. I think it’s possible in future. :slight_smile:

I had the same problem but in 3dsMax. It’s very important that your unit setup is correct. I thought I was working in cm(the hair export asks which unit), but apparently it was set to inches. Which also gave that strange offset.
I hope helps…

Thanks for all the suggestions, I’ve followed them all, but now comes the kicker!

://i.imgur/KOnrwV1.png

That’s what i’m dealing with. The purple lines are the skeleton, in the left most figure it’s completely static (No skinning) and the hair clips through the neck, but it works. sorta.
In blueprint viewport it has porper shading (For the most part) including diffuse. In the game viewport however, there is no diffuse shading, whatsoever, and specular shading is completely borked from speculars from other lights than the directional light that’s lighting it. There’s also no diffuse in a new level with only a single directional light (default scene)

In the middle figure… I don’t know what happens. That’s what happens when I parent the Hair directly under the skeleton. On a positive note, I know the skinning works! but the game crashes the second it’s played with that in the scene.

Left most image and small images are the maya scene. (It contains nodes for the purposes of Apex Cloth, exports and works just fine.)
I’m exporting in cm, and those are my working units. If I mess with the scale, it just scales the entire malformed skeleton. ABP, APX, Y-up, Z-up, Right, left. any combination of these doesn’t do a thing besides rotate the skeleton on import.

Just wondering, are all of the other examples right now made with 3dsMax? it sure sounds like it.

And if is the case, I doubt will be something that I can fix.

There are examples that come with the HairWorks SDK that are done in Maya, just look in the examples for the maya scenes, you could look at how they set it up. As I said earlier, I have never used Maya for Hair so no idea. But if you are willing to send me the assets in FBX format, and the hair in apx format, I could look and see if I can get it to work in UE4 for you.

@Ok i got ur 4.9.2 gameworks version compiled ,but ehn starting it gives an error saying ā€œExpecting ShaderCompilerWorker ouput version 1,got 1000 instead ,forget to build shadercompilerā€ however when i rebuild it it still doesnt work,it crahes after that strangly saying its leap motion plugin fault,ipll guess i need help with that ^^

okay dont rly now whats diff now but after the second rebuild of shader compiler i dont get error anymore,however its still crashing giving leap motion the fault

Edit: i got it starting like the official older nvidia branches do,however it only works when i dc the leap motion from my computer,but i kind of rly need that one any idea why it wouldnt start with it connected?

Done - please try the latest official version. I reverted back to the old, less clean, backend, which happens to be much faster.
version also fixes some flickering/corruption issues with dynamic geometry such as particles.

Hey , if it’s coming in rotated 90 degrees in +X axis then your up axis is z and not y. If that’s not the case then it might be to do with your models bind pose. If the bind pose is somehow not exporting correctly it could cause offsets, incorrect animations etc.

When you add the Hair component to the Capsule Component, copy the translation and rotation values of your Mesh component to the Hair… then parent the Hair component to the Mesh component.