Procedural Utility Poles HDA (Houdini)
Demo showing the parameters of the Utility Pole HDA inside of Houdini.
The tool offers plenty of parameters that let's you go from a simple and clean look, to a very, very busy one".
Optional transformers and secondary lines can be added to the system. The wires are generated in the same way as the main ones, whilst the transformers can be switched out for instanced meshes if so desired.
The following images give a brief insight into the HDA network and parameter setup.
This Documentation is written as so another technical artist would be able to navigate the setup and continue working on the tool as a whole.
I've been really eager to get a chance to play around with procedural tools, in this project, I gave myself the opportunity to familiarize myself with Houdini, Houdini engine, and HDA (Houdini Digital Asset) creation!
I wanted to create a tool for Unreal Engine in which the artist would be able to quickly draft utility poles and wires for environments. Whilst the HDA contains a few parameters and options for procedurally modelling the components of the utility pole, the system is really meant to instance most components of the pole using artist defined meshes.
The system tackles a variety of different areas of procedural tooling and modelling. Wires are generated from a defined point in relation to all instanced "insulators", and are built to look as a continous, cylindrical mesh, with a user defined amount of minimum and maximum "slag, or hang" to them.
Procedurally generated meshes are given unreal material slots that can be assigned with an unreal material after cooking, whilst meshes instanced through input geometry will carry it's already assigned material through the cooking process. Optional UV offsetting of copied meshes meshes also allow for a variety in the material between all poles, assuming that they're using seamless materials for their surface.
There's definitely more I think can be done with this tool. I think it would be really interesting to offer the environment artist the option to cut the utility wires using slice meshes before cooking. I also think the tool would benefit greatly from allowing the user to input the landscape of the environment, and have the poles adapt their direction and height based on their underlying terrain. I'd also like to see a version of the tool where all the parameters of the parameters are offered in a more streamlined and compact version, where the artist might only be expected to interact with a couple of sliders to drastically change the look and feel of the Utility poles, rather then having to tune everything manually!
