vfx-tricks/vfx-tricks-toolbox

Tools for Houdini, Unreal Engine and Deadline

VFX Tricks Toolbox - www.vfxtricks.com

Contents:

• Houdini HDAs and Shelftools
• Deadline plugins
• Unreal Engine Sequencer Exporter

See Installation guide

Submit bugs and feature requests via Issues

Feedback is welcome via Discussions

1. Houdini HDAs and Shelftools

https://www.sidefx.com/

The main goal of Houdini tools is to accelerate content creation at VFX Tricks. Creating setups and tutorials is time consuming. Mundane tasks like caching, publishing and farm submission shouldn't be a slowing down factor. Writing and reading caches is at the heart of every VFX pipeline 🎥, it needs to be quick, easy and reliable. After seeing many implementations at various studios, I decided to make my own that will suit VFX Tricks creators needs. This package will include caching and setup/shot specific tools.

⚠️ HDAs are in Indie .hdalc format

Cacher SOP

• .usd, .bgeo.sc and .vdb
• USD geometry purpose (render, proxy and guide)
• version control and stats 📝
• sections (wedging) 🍕

Lop Cacher Import

• dynamically import .usd Cachers to LOP network
• well suited for Multishot workflow

Multishot workflow

At VFX Tricks we usually provide single hip file with multiple shots inside. For single artist working on mulitple shots, I find this way better than conventional approach at VFX studios(each shot/element in separate hip file).

Shelftools

• create OBJ contexts for each shot
• import shots from UE Sequencer
• set frame range per shot
• toggle cooking mode - I recommend assigning a hotkey -> must have!
• Cacher SOP and Farm Submiter ROP take advantage of this workflow

2. Deadline plugins

https://www.awsthinkbox.com/deadline
https://docs.thinkboxsoftware.com/products/deadline/10.1/1_User%20Manual/manual/app-index.html

VFX Tricks Toolbox extends existing Houdini plugins shipped with Deadline.

• USD caching - SOP and Stage
• USD rendering via command line utility - husk
• sections(wedges) submits hip file only once. Current section(wedge) is defined by env variable, resulting faster submission to farm ⏱

3. Unreal Engine Sequencer Exporter

https://docs.unrealengine.com/5.0/en-US/unreal-engine-sequencer-movie-tool-overview/

A quick way of exporting animated assets (static mesh, camera, etc.) from Sequencer to FBX with supporting JSON data file.
Then import to Houdini each shot as a Multishot context with corresponding assets and frame ranges.