megaH - megascans to Houdini integration

Status

This project is no longer actively developed or maintained. It was used mainly in student vfx, animation productions.

Check v2.0_* branches for the most recent state.

Setup

1. Add houdini folder from this repo into HOUDINI_PATH environment variable, for example add this line to your houdini.env

HOUDINI_PATH = "&;/home/myUser/megaH/houdini"

2. Set MEGA_LIB environment variable pointing to the folder containing all megascans assets.

MEGA_LIB = "/home/myUser/megascans_library"

3. Set MEGA_SHADER environment variable to the operator name of a shader (OTL Operator Type, which can be seen by right-clicking on the shader asset and selecting Type Properties...) you want to use for your assets. (this variable is optional, it is used for automatic shader assignment)

MEGA_SHADER = "jt_megaShader"

Usage

• Sample library for testing can be found here (without textures).
• After your environment variables are set up, in Houdini you can start using Megascans tools shelf.
  • Crack OBJs does required pre-process step which splits original OBJ asset sets into individual assets. This tool will recursively scan specified path for OBJs. It is required to run this step only once. If a new asset folder is added, then it is required to run this tool on the folder. Although this tool outputs assets in the OBJ geometry format, output file extension is .OBJ (uppercase) in order to easily distinguish it from original uncracked OBJ file.
  • Index assets scans through folders specified in MEGA_LIB path and looks for cracked OBJs, then it organizes it based into subassets and respective LODs and stores as a dictionary in a JSON file located in MEGA_LIB/index.json, it will overwrite index.json if it already exists
• As well there is a Megascans section in TAB Menu in SOPs containing related assets.
  • Mega load is assets loader, which provides simple UI for choosing desired asset.
    • rename option enables automatic renaming of the node to the name of a selected asset
    • display changes viewport preview complexity, does not effect rendered result
    • textured will show textures in the viewport (sometimes it is required to dive into the asset in order to update textures in the viewport)
    • shader
      • Find Shader button will automatically scan current Houdini project for the shader associated with the megascans assets (specified in MEGA_SHADER environment variable)
        • this asset is setting up packed disk primitive to the correct path on the disk and it also sets various attributes required for the shading pointing to the textures included in Megascans library
          • those string attributes include: disp, norm, albedo, rough, spec, lod for displacement, normal map, diffuse albedo, specular roughness, specular intensity/tint and lod information, which can be used in shader logic (it will contain one of the following values: High, 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5)
          • note that in case of High LOD selected, normal map will use NormalBump texture.