Procedural Town
Project Goals:
The generation of procedural town to research and establish a complete workflow between Houdini and Unreal Engine 4. This project was done in 2 months by two interns at SideFX.
My Responsibility:
- Implement tools that will help with the generation of a western town inside of the Unreal Engine 4.
- Create a custom Terrain for the project based on Montana. I used the terrain tools provided by Houdini to generate the terrain.
- Generate tools to help set dress the environment quickly and efficiently.
- Miscellaneous Workflow/Helper tools such as generating a mask to be taken to Houdini.
- Unreal lighting and materials.
Tools Developed:
- Scatter Tool: A smart scatter tool for the foliage which has functionality to paint, mask and cull geometry based on distance.
- Poles and Fence Tool: Generates fences and poles based on curvature. Added functionality to randomize the placement. Electric pole tools had additional functionality for cables allowing for the amount of sag in the cable.
- Masking tools: Tool used to generate a mask based on contact between building geometry and terrain. This tool was used for masking out grass under and around the buildings.
- Road Tool: Tool used to flatten the terrain under the road and add a decal material for a dirt path. Had functionality to noise mask out the edges to blend with the environment.
- Barrel Tool: Tool used to generate various types of barrels seen in the scene. The tool allows you to specify the number of planks in each barrel and position of the iron bind. Added natural randomness to generate more worn down barrels.