SUAREZ: Unreal Engine and Houdini

Unreal Engine 5.4 Disney's Atlantis Crystal Chamber

After watching Disney's Atlantis again, I wanted to recreated the Crystal Chamber in Unreal Engine 5.4, All created and modeled in Unreal.

Movie Reference Image

Unreal Engine 5.4 - Realtime Fluids Dynamics

RnD in Unreal 5.4 with Dynamic Realtime 3D fluid emitters

Unreal Engine version of Buffalo Bayou Park Cistern

In Unreal Engine 5.4, I recreated an installation they have at the Buffalo Bayou Park Cistern in Houston Texas.

1.UnrealEngine version

2. Video of walking around installation

3. Video of singing performance that goes on as you walk around

4. Picture of location with no installation lights.

The Buffalo Bayou Park Cistern is a former drinking water reservoir built in 1926 for the City of Houston. BBP restored and repurposed the 87,500-square-foot Cistern into a magnificent public space for tours, performances, and art installations. Its a great experience and cool play with lights and water reflections to make it seem like a deep temple-like location.

Unreal Engine 5.3 Meta Human RnD

RnD UE 5.3 Meta Human features. Its pretty cool to be able to create facial expressions captures from my iphone video recording. Epic did a great job making it easy to accomplish.

UE 5.3 - Stylized VFX Attack

I downloaded a character and two animations then combined them into one and applied the skeleton binding. In addition, I created the Sword Trail effect, Motion Effect, Smoke Effect and an extra Power up Effect.
And a few audio cues to go along.. 😁

Unreal 5.3 - Base Game Play Mode

In order to provide VFX for a game, I need a game. So...I created one in UE 5 these past couple days. This is a WIP of the Base Gameplay mode (Hence the Drum And Bass 😏 ) I started with an initial blocking out version of the game to figure out all of the logic and blueprints of the game. I downloaded characters from Mixamo with animations, then set Third Person Player logic with blueprints. In addition I set up NPC characters with AI logic and also did a quick variation of one in Houdini, then reapplied skeleton binding and animations. I downloaded existing environment/vehicle meshes for initial setup. I am a VFX artist so the principle of the gameplay is basic, Try to last as many rounds as you can as the NPC's multiply every round, Yea I know sounds familiar 😉 But now I have enough to polish and start to add VFX for 10% more badass. 😁
Let the games begin!!!

Unreal Engine 5.3

Level FX / CHAOS destruction / Level Characters

[W.I.P.] [Simple Mocap Animations]

Unreal Engine 5.3 exercises - I took a break from Houdini Crowds RnD to give some love to the Unreal 5.3 engine. I took approximately an hour to set dress some existing FX within this environment I downloaded from UE marketplace. I utilized the pre-existing cinematic cameras within the level sequencer to render out. In addition I downloaded Characters and mocap anims to be retargeted and used with the UE5 engine as player characters. I also tested out some destruction with the Chaos system within UE5. Its nice that most of the bugs for Houdini to Unreal pipeline have smoothed out some. Great job to all dev software teams! 💪

This clip shows a render with FX and below that is a render without FX.
More testing to come!

Houdini 20 Pyro Meteors

Created some Pyro Meteors

Houdini 20 - Crowd with Pyro as forces

Crowd Simulation [W.I.P.] [Simple Mocap Animations]

Houdini Crowd exercises - Setup mocap animations towards agents with a ragdoll threshold with Pyro.

Houdini Stadium Crowds

Crowd Simulation [W.I.P.] [Simple Mocap Animations]

Houdini Crowd - Multiple Agents with Material Style sheets and multiple random mocap animations.

Crowd Simulation [W.I.P.] [Simple Mocap Animations]
Houdini Crowd - Multiple Agents with Material Style sheets and multiple random mocap animations.