Houdini - Mesh fracturing preparations

Technical & Engine Help Houdini Help
#1

Hi everyone!

I have been trying to prepare some fractured meshes for use within UE4. What i’m hoping to do is basically take any mesh (let’s say a sphere) fracture it and then control the chunks with the shader in UE4, pulling them apart using a spheremask etc. I have tried fracturing my meshes and then simply exporting the .FBX but there has to be more to it because it just acts as one solid mesh whenever i pull it into UE4 and try to work with it.

I’m not trying to set up a fracture simulation in Houdini, that is no problem. I simply want to prepare
a fractured mesh in Houdini that i can work with in UE4 using a vertex shader.

What does your workflow look like when doing similar things? Any gotchas? I’m hoping to put together a small checklist for myself to use in the future when preparing my meshes.

Thanks everyone!

#2

You need a way to export the pivot data of each piece, otherwise your shader is pushing them based on a single vector/pivot for the whole mesh. I believe @pamar is actually working on a tutorial for just that.

Check out Pivot Painter, something like this might get you started for now

3 Likes
#3

Thanks Nate!

I figured there was something big i was missing. I’m looking forward to that tutorial and in the mean time i’ll check out the PivotPainter video you mentioned.

Much appreciated!