CorvaeOboro / zhoudini

ZENV

• houdini hda tools focused on procedural modeling environments .
• open source work in progress , many thanks to sidefx and other libraries and tutorials .

DOWNLOAD | INSTALL NOTES | TOOL LIST | ALL | WEBSITE

INSTALL

• DOWNLOAD , extract zip to any local path
• Copy zenv.json to ( C:/Users/USER/Documents/houdini18.5/packages/ ) matching local user and houdini version
• Edit zenv.json file text line to match local path to zenv folder
• Alternatively may copy the included houdini.env to ( C:/Users/USER/Documents/houdini18.5/ ) editing to match local path of zenv folder

TOOLS LIST

jump to category :

hip/00_ALL_HDA/00_ALL_HDA.hip

click names below for tool example :

CREATE

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	z GEN BRICKMAIN 01	stone brick variation generator , creates set of low and hipoly for baking
	z DIFFUSION REACTION TUBES	fill mesh with intestine brain like tubes based on simulated diffusion chemical reaction
	z CURL LINES LOOP	creates lines curling on input mesh surface using curlnoise loop
	z DRIP GRUNGE	drips grunge under overhangs , longer when near more drip neighboors
	z GEN REVOLVE BASIC	creates revolved mesh path deformed to backbone curve , input profile and backbone curves
	z GEN STAIRWAY	creates stairway made of bricks , optional guideline and collision avoidance
	z CURL LINES THEN PLACE SPIRALS	creates curllines on the surface of mesh then copies spirals to the geometry with collision detection
	z GEN CIRCLES RADIATE PATTERN	creates circular patterns inspired by Seigaiha . scatter circles , then radiate those circles outward while avoiding intersection by order or generation .
	z GEN STONE BRICK CIRCLE	creates a circular brick section by even voronoi fracturing extruding toward center . applies noise and bevel to resemble stone
	z HELIX ALONG CURVE	creates multiple spiraling helix curves around input guide line
	z WIRE OVERLAPING OFFSET	creates wires from input curves rayed to ground collision offset near neighboor wires
	z GEN RUNES	creates rune like symbols
	z GEN ROCK THIRDS	creates a rock stylized by lot subdivision rule of thirds , setup for PDG
	z GEN PILLAR	generate pillar - holding multiple brick generators and circle brick generators assembled to create a full pillar .
	z GEN ROCK 4m	creates a simple rock , with fractured surfacing
	z GEN TUBES FINDPATHS FROM CURVE	generates tubes that procedurally find a path to not intersect other tubes following along the length of a guide curve
	z GEN CRACK BRANCHING	creates branching crack mesh used for booleaning other meshes
	z GEN GIZMO	axis gizmo for debug
	z GLASS BOOLEAN	input mesh with irregular shaped holes , creates an intersection plane cut to fit , adds inset with vertex color falloff from edge for shader
	z GEN LATTICE GRIDMESH	creates a box of grids with interior points ideal for use as a lattice deformer

PLANTS

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	z PLANTS HELIX ROOTS	create winding intertwined roots from a guide line .
	z PLANTS PETAL FORM	creates petal from curve backbone and multiple warped elipse curves defining the shape changes over the length of the backbone
	z PLANTS VINES W LEAVES	creates vines conforming to surface of mesh guided by line . iterative collision checks slow tho precise , leaves also collision avoid
	z PLANTS MOSS HANGING	creates hanging placements of moss mesh
	z PLANTS VINES GUIDED	creates a vine tube using a wandering path finder guided variably by a curve or direction vector
	z PLANTS SCATTER LEDGE	layouts hanging plants aligned along edges of input mesh with collision checks
	z PLANTS TREE PATHFIND	generate a tree using shortest path thru curves scattered and connected around collision objects and previous tree roots

ITEM

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	z ITEM ABILITY ICON	creates variety of icon of ability in TOPS by wedgenum
	z ITEM RING	creates variety of ring items , helix , diffusion tubes , rock gemstones , in TOPS by wedgenum
	z ITEM RING FROM IMAGE	creates a projected 3d ring from isometric image , setup for TOPs processing folder of images to 3d relit renders
	z ITEM HELM	creates variety of helm items in TOPS by wedgenum
	z ITEM POTION	creates variety of potion items in TOPS by wedgenum
	z ITEM SWORD FROM IMAGE	creates a sword mesh from image , traces , orients , thickens by skeleton , uvs projected , baked to vertex colors

PATH

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	z PATH BASE	creates a path floor section and collision , this is the basis for all other path snapmap variants .
	z PATH LEDGE	creates environment mesh for isometric snapmap pieces , used with PATH_BASE
	z PATH ISO EXTRUDE	isometric camera angle extrude , for use with PATH to avoid camera blocking geo
	z PATH DIRECTIONS	cycle thru 90 degree rotations and mirrored variantions . for use with path tool
	z PATH 2SPLINE COLLISION	input two curves defining the border of a path , creates floor geo and collision for gameplay

LAYOUT

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	z COPY TO POINTS BY PIECENUM INTERSECTIONCHECK	copy variants by piecenum attribute with collision checks
	z COPY MESH ALONG CURVE DEFORM	pipe / wire curvedeform for houdini engine . copies input mesh without stretching along a curve , adds cuts for smoother bending , projects normals outward from curve ,
	z COPY TO EVENLY DISTRIBUTED GRID	copy by piecenum to dynamic evenly spaced grid - useful when baking and review
	z TILE 4m	copies input to each of the nearby quadrants preview tiling ( 4m default )
	z TRANSFORM ITERATE COLLISION CHECK	iteratively move pieces towards nearest goal while avoid itersection with collision ( an iterative simplified gravity / attraction sop based )

MODIFY

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	z VORONI FRACTURE GRADIENT OFFSET	voronoi fractures then offsets clusters by multiple world space gradients . useful for rock and cliff forms .
	z DEFORM BY HELIX	deform the input mesh by a helix fit to the object bounds
	z MESH SUBTRACT COLLAPSE END	simple boolean subtract with option to collapse . useful for quick edits in ue4
	z DEFORM BY AXIS	bounding box ramp deformation , using multi axes \ multiple ramps
	z NOISE DISPLACE MASKED	3d noise ramp creates a mask remaping the displacement of mesh by a second 3d noise . no uvs requred , aligned in world space
	z MESH WRAP DEFORM BY UV	deform mesh to another mesh by using the flattened UVs , useful to wrap a pattern around another
	z MESH SURFACE SIMPLE REMESH	mesh surface simple remesh ray projects a grid unto the input geo and remeshes then reduces , helpful for fixing chaotic geo and non manifold errors .
	z PLANARIZE MULTIPLE SURFACES	input mesh surface is segmented by avg n and flattened from multiple directions . useful to randomly planarize from different angles for rock meshes
	z MESH CHIP CRACK	boolean subtract chipping and crack meshes onto the surface based on curvature and fit projecting the crack meshes .
	z CONFORM INTERSECTING LERP	conform around a given colllision object if has intersection
	z MESH SLICER SAVE	separates large meshes into grided sections and exports them to fbx , options for specific area exports , and compatible with houdini engine .
	z STAMP FOREACH PIECE	randomized boolean of one mesh on to the surface of variants . useful for cutting designs into bricks
	z SMOOTHING FROM UVs	hard edges by uv island for baking
	z SPLIT CLIP CREVISE	separate the input into two outputs with an indent along the separation , useful separating environment shell into terraced layers
	z CUT INTERSECT DARKEN	darken a surface from the intersections of other objects , with option to boolean those cuts in

REMOVAL

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	z REMOVE PIECES BY VOLUME	for each connected element , remove if doesnt match min or max measured volume , also has options of perimeter or other measurements
	z KEEP ONLY LARGEST CONNECTED ELEMENT	removes smaller detached objects
	z KEEP BIGGER OF TWO	takes two inputs and ouputs only one ( bigger or smaller )
	z KEEP ONLY FIRST LAST PRIMS	carve for prim lines after segments split
	z REMOVE THIN MESH	removes prims based on thickness measurement , then can fill in holes , useful for removing thin slivers

UV

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	z UV AXIS ALIGN SNAP	optimize uv location , moves uvs to zero to one space for precision in games
	z UV ALIGN WORLD	align uv islands to world axis
	z UV OVERLAP CHECK	a slow tho absolute uv overlap check , by intersection checks , separates all overlaping prims, then repacks
	z UV TEXEL DENSITY CHECK	check texel density with colorized debug , handles multiple materials with different texture resolutions by specifiying the materials name string and their rez
	z UV POLYWIRE	creates polywire with specific UVs , useful when sweep is not producing desired bends
	z UV TRIM	fits uvs into specific trim sheet area while scaling the pieces along an axis relative to their world space
	z LIGHTMAP UV GEN	UVs creation for lightmaps , stored to uv1 with higher merge threshold

QA

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	z COLLISION INTERSECT CHECK	detect and show intersections with provided collision geometry . useful to avoid clipping into level geometry beyond a specific distance threshold

TEXTURE

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	z TEX SEAM BLENDER	blend and blur a texture across uv seams to fix small bake errors and make seamless , additionally blending intersections of the meshes when surface details do not share a uvseam edge .. this is WIP bruteforce approach dividing the mesh by texel density and transfering the colors to vertexcolor bluring in worldspace proximity lastly adding in some noise counteract the blur .

VFX

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	z VFX SLASH from ANIM	create a smoothed swipe mesh for vfx , sword slashing

CAM

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	z CAM ISOMETRIC	camera with crane\boom arm setup matching isometric game settings
	z CAM PROJECTION fspy	a wrapper for fspy hda created by floodini , input fspy json creating camera matching ref image perspective then project that image to floor plane

MESH

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	z VDB INTERNAL FILL	mesh to vdb to mesh , combines multiple lower res vdb's that are eroded to fill in the internal spaces
	z EDGEGROUP BY UV AXIS	edgegroup based on axis of uvs , useful for polybeveling specific edges procedurally
	z POLYBEVEL SAFE	polybevel with fix for exploding points
	z SHRINKWRAP VORONOI CLUSTERS	similar to convex decomposition , cuts mesh into pieces via voronoi , shrinkwraps those pieces . useful for rocky shapes
	z TUBE MESH BETWEEN TO CIRCLES	input 2 circles , create a cyllinder between them
	z REVERSE BY N UP	attempts to fix reversed backfacing normals on multiple sub meshes, useful for fixing exported levels with mirrored ( negative scaled ) objects
	z POLYREDUCE GRADIENT QUADS	polyreduce setup with gradient retention to keep mostly quads , with secondary reduction
	z REMESH RAY SPHERE	remesh using sphere around object , iteratively raycast and smooth to approximate shape

LINES

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	z CURVE FROM TUBE	centered curve from mesh ( even if mesh has nonuniform topology )
	z CURVES FROM UV ISLANDS	for each uv island create a line curve aligned by the longest angle or vertical\horizontal . useful for generating tree branch curves from existing low poly trees
	z MASK TO LINE	creates line from image color
	z SORT BY LINEAXIS	sorts a line contigously linearly along axis , enforcing a point order on a curved line when sort by axis may skip around

COLOR

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	z COLOR MASK VERTEX	creates vertex colors for game masking . AO , Variation ( random per connected element ) , and localized gradients ( Z axis per connected element )
	z COLOR NOISE HI	assigns colors based on curvature ramps , useful for hi poly stones and bricks
	z COLOR LINES SCRATCH VTX	cuts in elipses and applys vertex colors for stratches along an axis
	z VERTEXCOLOR CONVERT	converts standard rgb vertex color blending to multilayer vertex blending with alpha

MATERIAL

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	z UDIM CONVERT	convert single material UDIM to multiple materials , and reposition the uvs into zero to one

NORMALS

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	z NORMAL AREA WEIGHTED	normals smoothed face area weighted alternative

PYTHON

• HOUDINI_HDA_PLACE_ALL.py = for each hda in a folder creates hython script to place the nodes in houdini
• HOUDINI_PATH_TOPs_CREATE_SET.py = creates hython script to place TOP nodes for each PATH mesh component
• UNREAL_PATH_CREATE_SNAPMAPS.py = for each set of PATH meshes creates unreal map for each corresponding variant

RECOMMENDED LIBRARIES

• SideFXLabs https://github.com/sideeffects/SideFXLabs
• qLib https://github.com/qLab/qLib
• AeLib https://github.com/Aeoll/Aelib
• nLib https://github.com/Njordy/nLib
• mifthtools https://github.com/mifth/mifthtools
• jhorikawa https://github.com/jhorikawa/HoudiniHowtos

CREATIVE COMMONS ZERO

free to all , creative commons CC0 , free to redistribute , attribution not required