HoudiniEngineForUnreal-v2

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Here a few issues with the UI of HDAs in unreal.

1. The scroll bar does not account for the size of the Inputs or Outputs sections. Therefor the scrollbar drastically changes size as you scroll up and down the asset. This is a minor annoyance, but definitely something that hurts the usability feeling.

2. Houdini Inputs do not have the "Set from Content Browser" arrow. This makes the workflow feel different from typical Unreal workflows which for many users rely on this button everywhere.

3. It would be nice for the Bake options to include a "Content Browser" option. This option would not create an actor in the level, but would bake all the outputs to the content browser into the bake folder. This would be a better workflow for tools that are meant to generate reusable content than creating an actor.

4. Until save and reload, Baking to an actor creates actors that cannot be deleted. The Delete button doesn't do anything and Edit>Delete is grayed out.

Hi Ryan,

Thanks for the feedback! #1 has already been reported to us, so expect it to be fixed in future updates.

#2 has also previously been RFEd (both for v1 and v2), so it's already on our list.

#3 since there is no way to save an actor to the CB, baking to actors will always create actors in the current level with the generated components attached to it. If you want to save to the CB, you should use the "Bake to BP" option, which will bake all the components to a blueprint actor in the CB, as well as all the used Static Meshes and generated materials etc..

#4 This one sounds like a bug. I'll update when it's been fixed.

Thanks Damien, #3 I think maybe there is value in another option. As way of a contrived example: imagine a tool that is used to create rock varieties, the tool could set an arbitrary number of outputs each with a different rock variety.

The artist tunes some numbers and sees all the variety of rocks laid on top of it self.

The desired output of the tool is a folder full of rocks that other users may now use when decorating a scene directly from the content browser.

Currently, the artist does not want a blueprint with all the rocks, but instead wants each rock separate. Baking to actor, or baking to blueprint would both create all the rocks in the content browser, but has the additional step of either creating an actor in the level, or a blueprint in the content browser as well.

To avoid that, currently, the artist could go to each output and click bake on each output, obviously this would be time consuming.

Outputs that don't get baked to assets would, of course, be lost, but that is the idea.

Perhaps Bake to Content Browser is the wrong phrase, perhaps a more accurate phrase is "Bake Outputs to Assets" or something else more descriptive.

In a less contrived example, one of the VFX artists we have testing Houdini Engine has created a tool that lets him create meshes that have an arbitrary amount of floating cards. He currently has to go down to the outputs to press the Bake button in the output list. Until I pointed out that he could do that, he thought there was no way to bake the mesh output without creating a blueprint or an actor, which creates a lot of needless clicks.

The sole purpose of that tool is to create static mesh assets in the content browser, I think another bake option would alleviate that confusion, and support artist tools with similar use cases.