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Learn an advanced workflow to export up to two million particles from Houdini to Unreal. It works similarly to SideFX Labs' Houdini to Niagara. Instead of exporting the Houdini particle data to a json file that Unreal Engine reads, we export to an exr sequence. This exports much faster from Houdini and it can be loaded on the GPU, making the simulation run far better in UE5. We will go over how the system works, and walk step-by-step through building it yourself. At the end, you will know how the system works, and how to prepare it for high quality VFX / motion graphics rendering. One small caveat: The larger (in coordinate space) the simulation, the more imprecisions will happen because of 16-bit data precision.

In the next video of this series, we will work with our Houdini simulation and build shaders and set up studio lighting in Unreal Engine 5. We will also deal with some artifacts you might run into when rendering in UE5, and discover some neat tips and tricks for getting around it.

UE5 and Houdini project files and assets available here. Free with code: UERENDER https://dannylrsn.gumroad.com/l/sfzgs

Junichiro Horikawa: "Houdini to UE5 - How to Send Geometries with Attributes - Tutorial"
   • Houdini to UE5 - How to Send Geometri...  

phire de: "How to render dynamic point clouds in Unreal Engine 4.25 with Niagara"
   • How to render dynamic point clouds in...  

Medium post that inspired this experiment: "How To Play Back Volumetric Point Cloud Animations In UE4"
  / how-to-play-back-volumetric-point-cloud-an...  
(Thanks to Kim Strandli for getting me hooked on this idea)

The Houdini simulation is inspired by Tactyc Studios: https://www.behance.net/gallery/15085...

Chapters:
00:00 - Intro
00:30 - Overview
01:05 - Houdini Alembic Export
01:34 -Transform to UE Space
01:49 - Points to Grid (VEX)
03:29 - COPs Points to Texture
06:09 - Export EXR Sequence from Houdini
06:44 - UE5 Project Setup
07:30 - Niagara Preparation
09:36 - Niagara Read Particle Data
12:35 - Niagara Optimization
14:15 - Import EXR Sequence to UE5
15:12 - Setup Level Sequence
16:43 - Niagara Mesh Renderer
17:50 - Import Alembic Cache to UE5
18:29 - Recap
19:14 - Next Steps