Destroying things in Houdini for a Unity project
2I have been working with Houdini to develop some cool effects and content for Unity and working on a custom "Effects Framework" toolset which plays along with Houdini and my external tool chain. I've learned a lot of cool features in Houdini, such as RBD destruction nodes shown in this video.
I am simulating a spherical object (with visual damage done to it) which falls and smashes my concrete tile. By playing around with forces and parameters like the strength of "glue" holding pieces together, I am able to get some visually interesting results like this simulation. I just liked how the big piece flies up, spins in the air and then hits the ground and breaks apart!
The idea behind using these efficiently in Unity is that you export your geometry (meshes in .FBX format) and use what are called "VATs" (vertex animation textures) to store the packed movement data for the destruction pieces. A special shader in your game engine can then animate the vertices without using expensive skeletal animation systems and skinned meshes.