Alex Dault
Technical Design Portfolio (VR/AR)
Among the Wysteria
Terrain Design. I created the terrain using World Creator’s node editor (https://www.world-creator.com/) and imported the heightmap into UE4.26. I have since switched to a workflow where I create the heightmap in UE, export it into Houdini, use procedural tools to create my space and then bring the heightmap back into Unreal Engine.
2. Character Animation. Sparrow is a rigged model from the Paragon character library and includes a set of animations that I was able to use with the Sequence Editor. In the video below I scrub through and mount one of my camera angles to demonstrate Sequencer a bit.
2. Pipeline Case Study. Procedural Terrain in Houdini into UE4.26
I’m going to quickly step through how using five nodes (Noise, Scatter, Copy to Points, Paint Mask and Merge) you can quickly create unique terrains. For this project I’m trying to create a junkyard with stacks of crushed cars. Houdini lets me seed my geometry in a point cloud that I can swap with my static meshes in UE4.26 using their plugin.
Heightfield Node. I export a scaled heightmap out of UE4 and bring it into Houdini.
2. Heightfield Mask on my terrain for the player exploration area.
3. Heightfield Noise Node using a Chebyshev Worley pattern. The noise node lets me set the amplitude and element size of the noise.
4. Scatter to Points Node. This is where Houdini really starts to shine. Three scatter nodes allow me to lay out placeholder objects for when I bring the scene into Unreal. I’ll be able to swap my spheres and cubes for static meshes in the game engine. I’ve merged a grid with the heightfield so I can seed items on the players path.
5. Houdini Digital Asset Session in Unreal Engine 4.26
Here’s where the fun really begins! I import the Houdini Digital Asset of my terrain into Unreal Engine where I can modify my parameters through a live connection with Houdini. I also swap in some of my meshes for my geometry. In just under an hour, I have a cool environment for my junkyard level all ready to go.
3. Virtual Production Tools.
Using the nDisplay plugin which has been updated for UE4.26, the Animism team was able to push the rendered world of the game engine onto a curving cave wall of ROE LED panels.
2. My role was to manage our UE environment, troubleshoot the configuration of nDisplay, design tools for our director to work with on set and manage our Vive trackers.
