This post will go over some tips on how to export the Height Field terrain as an HDA (Houdini Digital Asset) and import it into Unreal Engine as a playable environment or game asset.

Houdini’s Height Fields provides a simple and fast way of building complex landscape geometry, but what if I wanted to hull out areas in the terrain to make a tunnel? Cave? Secret underground path for a game?

Volume VOP’s (visual operators) are extremely powerful! Volume VOP’s like any other VOP nodes in Houdini is multi-threaded and all operations are run in parallel utilizing all the cores in your computer. Fast and flexible, who could ask for more?

This is an explanation of the math behind how the Height Ramp in the Height Field Mask by Feature node in Houdini is calculated.

Houdini’s Seamless Integration with Height Fields. The Height Fields fit in very nicely with the rest of Houdini’s infamous simulation tools. I can create a random test terrain within a minute and then use it for fracturing in a destruction simulation right away.