Houdini and Unity tools

Combining Houdini’s generative capabilities with Unity’s interactivity, these tools enable rapid iteration for XR and game-ready content.

Houdini and Unity tools

Combining Houdini’s generative capabilities with Unity’s interactivity, these tools enable rapid iteration for XR and game-ready content.

Armor Peeling System

A Houdini-to-Unity pipeline for procedurally rigged armor pieces with interactive, collision-based detachment logic driven by a user-placed gizmo.

In Houdini:

Each armor piece was procedurally extracted from the base mesh. A centroid joint was created for every part and parented to the main skeleton.

Using Capture Pack Geometry, each piece was skinned by name. The result was a single FBX with cleanly rigged armor, ready for Unity.

In Unity:

A custom runtime script (ArmorPeelingGizmo.cs) enables manual placement of a gizmo.

When triggered, it detects overlapping armor pieces, evaluates contact direction and velocity, and detaches them by unparenting and applying physical force.

Why this matters:

This pipeline allows fully procedural armor setup and interactive detachment — perfect for hit reactions.

Lightweight and optimized for mobile (tested on Android), it’s flexible for future gameplay extensions.

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Fence Placement Tool

A designer-friendly procedural fence system built in Houdini as an HDA, used directly inside Unity.

In Houdini:

The fence system was built as a game-ready HDA, designed to receive a curve input from Unity.

In Unity:

A designer draws a curve in the scene to define fence placement.

Why this matters:

This setup enables fast, curve-based fence design directly in Unity.

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Animation Retargeting Headline

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Animation Retargeting

A custom animation pipeline built in Houdini using KineFX to unify, blend, and re-target motion from multiple rigs for real-time deployment in Unity.

In Houdini:

The system imports animations from various rig sources like Mixamo or mocap. All motion is first retargeted to a shared T-pose base rig to normalize the skeleton.

Using KineFX, you can blend full-body or partial animations (e.g. run + wave), and split motion into regions for modular layering. The result is then retargeted to a custom Unity-compatible rig and exported as a clean, skinned FBX for prefab use.

Why It Matters:

This non-destructive pipeline allows mixing animations from inconsistent rigs without re-authoring.

It’s fully procedural, supports versioning, and is ideal for rapid real-time development.

Example:

Blend a Mixamo run with a mocap aim pose,

retarget it to your game rig, and export to Unity as a prefab animation.

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Crowd VAT Generator Headline

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Crowd VAT Generator

A scalable system for real-time character variation using a single VAT texture with multiple embedded animations, driven by runtime logic in Unity and generated procedurally in Houdini.

In Houdini:

Multiple animation clips were combined into a single Vertex Animation Texture (VAT). Each motion cycle—such as idle, walk, and turn—was offset in the texture timeline and encoded into RGB channels.

A single geometry mesh and texture sheet represented all animations. Metadata like frame ranges, loop points, and total durations were exported to guide playback. The final mesh and textures were optimized for lightweight engine integration.

In Unity:

A single prefab was used for each crowd agent, all referencing the same mesh and VAT texture.

On spawn, each instance randomly selected an animation cycle and applied a phase shift to desynchronize movement. Per-instance data was set via Material Property Blocks. A custom shader read this data to animate each character accurately, using no bones or rig overhead.