Temp Folder and Other Questions about houdiniengineforunreal-v2 HOT 4 CLOSED

Hi Ryan,

Yes, v2 creates temporary files for Static Meshes, materials and texture coming from Houdini, and Landscape Layer Info Object (that are used when converting a Heightfield to a Landscape).

V1 was also producing those temporary files, except for the Static Meshes, which were saved in the current level instead of being saved in the temp directory.
This has actually caused a few issues in the past, as it sometimes corrupted the level, hence why we choose to move them to the temp directory as well.

For perforce, I'd either recommend sharing the default temp directory, or sharing "a" Houdini temp directory. If you don't, your colleagues will not be able to see the HDA result without cooking them when loading the level.

Sharing the default directory could work, but you may end up with a lot of temp assets in perforce.
What you could do, is share another temp directory, and modify the temp directory on HDA that you want to "commit" to others to that new one.
When testing and fumbling around with the plugin, you could use the default (not on perforce one).

Please note that you can clean up the temp directory of all unused/unreferenced assets by using the "Clean Houdini Engine Temp folder" in the menu.

I'll double-check that material attribute issue, but you're right, normally, unreal_material should just use/assign the existing material, whereas unreal_material_instance should create an instance of that material.

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I have not tried this, so ignore this, if this can be already done, but would it not make sense to be able to control the target temp directory from within the HDA? So when you author the HDA you could add (for example) a switch to bake to the "review" directory or the "no-commit" directory.
So basically a detail or primitive string attribute that determines the target directory.

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Hi,

I should have mentioned it in my reply, but v2 does support setting the temp folder via the "unreal_temp_folder" attribute. It works exactly like the "unreal_bake_folder" attribute.

With no attribute, the HDA uses the "default" temp folder (/HoudiniEngine/Temp).
You can override this per HDA via the "unreal_temp_folder" attribute.
And this can additionally be overridden as well via the asset's UI.

So the workflow you mentioned should already be possible, using a switch to change from the temp directory, to the perforce temp directory via the attribute.

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Thanks Damien,
This helps answer those questions. Do double check the material attribute issue, as I believe it is still an issue.

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