Concept Art by Ian Smith
I've had the exceptionally good fortune to be invited to take part in SideFX Project Pegasus! I'm working alongside talented artists like Ian Smith and Tilman Mielsch on the follow up to last years Project Titan.
Pegasus will showcase what is possible with game-art workflows in Houdini and Unreal, and we will be releasing everything related to the project for free to the public. This will include tools, tutorials, assets, and of course the final environment itself, which is a fantastical natural environment inspired by the scottish highlands.
It is still early days, but already some great work has been started by members of the team. For example:
The beginnings of an exciting new modular building tool
Procedural Rocks and Cliffs
During the project we are encountering typical challenges that artists face while building natural outdoor and fantasy environments, and we will be breaking down and documenting how we approached everything!
One exciting breakthrough we have had, that I think will play a large part in how Houdini is used with Unreal Engine in the future was by another artist on the project, who figured out how to send data from Unreal to Houdini using Unreal 5.2's new PCG system. Previously, if Artists wanted to send terrain or mesh data to Houdini, they needed to send the entire mesh and the entire terrain. Since the introduction of PCG in UE5.2, it is now possible to locally sample the mesh and terrain in Unreal, and send only the sample points to Houdini, this is millions of times faster and allows artists to work much more fluidly with the Houdini Engine plugin for unreal.
For my part - I'm currently working on some foliage related stuff, which I'm excited to share in the near future.