Create a UE Playable Character with Houdini Animations
In this session, I'll demonstrate how to export a character rig from Houdini into Unreal Engine and replace the default mannequin playable character in UE with our custom character rig. I'll export the procedural animations from Houdini into UE and the whole process doesn't require retargeting because the skeleton rig was created from scratch in Houdini!
Marvelous Designer to Houdini - Part 3 Export & Import Settings
In this video, I go over the parameters on exporting from Marvelous Designer and import setup in Houdini. I'll show you what it looks like when the clothing model is incorrectly imported so you can develop a keen eye to debug your own scenes in the future.
Crowds Basic Concept #6D - VEX in Crowd SIM
This is the last video in Concept 6! But there will be more Crowd Simulation Concept videos to come soon! I'm going to take a short break from Crowds just for the next video because Concept #6 took a lot out of me, but I'll be back with Concept 7 very soon! In this video, I finally dive into some simple VEX in Crowds and demonstrate how to do simple calculations during runtime to dynamically guide your Crowd agents. These techniques can be used in your own Crowd scenes in different ways and I hope you'll find the stuff useful in your own projects!
Crowds Basic Concept #6C - Target Selective Agents
In this video, I'm going to demonstrate how you can target specific agents in the Crowd SIM in Houdini and apply specific Crowd Triggers for full control! We'll organize the agents and give them unique attributes to be used in the Crowd SIM.
Crowds Basic Concept #6A - Crowd Triggers
In this video, I demonstrate how to setup Crowd Triggers in Houdini using the Animation States that were shown in previous videos.
Crowds Basic Concept #5 - In Place and Locomotive Animations
In this video, I demonstrate how you can fix the origin and pivot point of character animations for Crowd Agents in Houdini. Some animations contain movement data that tells Houdini and the Crowd Solver where the character is moving or when the character stops in place briefly for complex motions, like fighting actions and being hit feedback motions. If Houdini and the Crowd Solver doesn't know about these, it'll just treat it as a constant moving character causes unpredictable results. Here I'll show you how to fix this issue and get more realistic results out of your animations.
Crowds Basic Concept #4 - Custom Rig and Animations
In this video, I demonstrate how to add custom animations to your character, animations that you either made yourself one keyframe at a time or bought online or downloaded from mixamo. We'll then convert it into a Crowd Agent and you'll get to attach your custom animations to Crowd States and Agents.
Crowds Basic Concept #3 - Avoidance
How do you prevent Crowd Agents from colliding with each other in a Crowd Simulation in Houdini? The answer is Avoidance! But it doesn’t work the same way as you might think it does with RBD Collisions. In this video lesson, I explore how Avoidance works in Houdini’s Crowd Solver.
Crowds Basic Concept #2 - Character States & Animations
Adding animations to the characters in the Crowd simulation in Houdini really makes a scene come alive. You can easily create large scenes with Crowds making for a very busy and urban look.
KineFX Animation Basic Concept #5B & #5C - Animation Workflow
I use a new character that I've made to show case how to setup the animate and setup the IK Controls utilizing all the Basic Concept videos up until now in this Kine-FX mini-series for Houdini! There's a lot of new tips and tricks within this video that are only available in this video, that will help you rig & animate characters in Houdini using Kine-FX!
KineFX Animation Basic Concept #5 - Rotations Inheritance
we'll explore how the Full Body IK node in Houdini is used for quick character animations for long chains of rigged bones. This workflow is especially useful for animating with tails, fingers, ropes, tentacles, or anything that has a long chain of bones.
KineFX Animation Basic Concept #4 - Layering IK Nodes
I go over another technique you can use for Rig Posing with Houdini's KineFX system. By Layering the Full Body IK nodes and organize the rig poses into groups, it will make our Character Posing tasks a lot more efficient. Non-destructive rig posing! We can take this to a new level and tackle some more complex character poses that involves more limbs and requires more adjustments.
KineFX Animation Basic Concept #3B - Rig Posing Workflow
I demonstrate how we can use what has been taught up until now with Houdini's Kine-FX techniques and character rig posing to create a scene where the Octopus grabs onto a balloon. The Kine-FX is combined with some tricks in the viewport and Vellum Simulation to make the wrinkles in the balloon and make our lives easier rather than modeling the wrinkles manually. I hope this will inspire more ideas for future projects of your own!
KineFX Animation Basic Concept #3 - Priority
I demonstrate how priority can be added to the IK Control Bones and tell Houdini’s Kine-FX system which bones should be followed more closely than others. This will allow us more control over posing the characters and makes posing much easier!
Lip Sync Tools (Facial Deformer HDA v3)
This is an updated version of the Lip Sync tools used for animating a character to make it look like its talking using the Voice tools in Houdini.
Head Generator HDA v1 (beta release)
Head Generator HDA! Create different character heads on the fly just by dragging the timeline in Houdini, each unique frame number will generate a different head mesh. Make custom adjustments on the head by tweaking the sliders on the HDA. And it gets better! All onward randomly generate heads will be based on your changes!
Facial Deformer HDA
Lip Sync in Houdini is possible and EASY! I created a Facial Deformer HDA which generates all the different mouth shapes and spit it all out into blendshapes which are necessary for the Lip Sync workflow! Quick and easy! The best thing about my HDA is that I can use it to make different characters talk with lip sync all within a matter of minutes!