This project consists of a procedural gothic cathedral creation tool, made in Houdini
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an environment created using that tool and Unreal Engine 5.
Houdini Part Features:
- Cure-Based Input Shape: Allows user to input an arbitrary shape, regardless of closed or not, and use it as the foundation shape to construct geometry.
- Arch Windows: This is probably the hardest part in the whole project. The high level idea is using a for-each loop, and generate 2 to the power of iteration count of geometry. The main challenges were boolean geometry between different iterations, special cases of the 1st and last iteration. For this part I also made a Clover-maker sub-tool, which contributed a lot to the gothic look of the windows.
The Arch Windows also supports a user-input primary & secondary curve profile, used to define the shape of the main and secondary arches.
- Pinnacle: For this I used a very simplified version of the Arch Windows hda to create the simple window shapes, then taking the shape of the supporting pillars to generate the base shape.
- Edge Decoration: The borders would automatically adapt to the shape of the building, achieved by extracting the silhouette of the base shape. Then any user defined curve profile can be used to generate the shape.
- Fence: Also allows user input shapes to be used as the fence pattern. Basic logic behind this is: extract the edges from the base shape, then shrinking each edge to leave room for the pillars, and sweep it with a curve profile to generate geometry. I also used chain sop so that each pattern is perfectly next to each other.
Unreal Part:
I thought I would try to use my tool in a somewhat "production workflow". So I first sculpted a base terrain, then I used a bunch of megascan assets on FAB to decorate the environment (trees, rocks, mountains). Then I used my tool in houdini to create two cathedral variants, and simply imported into UE as fbx. I also tried to use Houdini Engine to use the tool directly inside UE and adjust parameters in real-time, however Houdini Engine was extremely slow and buggy and the geometry looked nothing like what it would in Houdini....so scratch that.
Since every part was already UVed in Houdini, I could simply use existing wall and brick textures to shade my cathedrals.