Special Guest Tutorial: Creating Digital Assets For Cinema 4D

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We are thrilled to introduce to you our very first special guest: Noseman! Not only is he an awesome teacher, he also tackles one of the most requested tutorial topics.

The top one question we receive is “how do I turn that setup into a digital asset?” – granted HDAs (Houdini Digital Assets) are a powerful thing, allowing you to interactively use your setups in other 3D apps such as Unity, Unreal, Maya, Max and of course Cinema 4D. If you’d like to knopw more about Houdini Engine, here’s the SideFX Page covering it. Anything you need to know to start building your first asset is covered by Noseman. Did we mention we’re thrilled to have him?

Download Houdini Digital Asset (HDA)

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13 Comments

  1. This is one of the best tutorials ever, but my Houdini Engine is failing to start the server, I’m using C4D R17 and Houdini 15.5. Thank you, guys.

      • Each C4D version or Build is “locked” to a specific Houdini Engine Version, as the Plugin is compiled agains that Houdini Engine version.
        The good thing is that you can have ANY number of Houdini Builds installed at the same time, so crete your assets with 15.5 and load them using the “allowed” Engine.

  2. A few questions:
    Are you using the Houdini Version downloaded from the “Pipeline – Get Houdini Installer”?
    Only that version of the Engine works with any particular C4D version, although you can create assets in any Houdini version, C4D needs that one to work.

    Do you by any chance have VRay installed? Vray seems to conflict with the Houdini Engine.

    • Hey Noseman, yes, I am downloading from Pipeline menu, I will try to delete the vray plugin and see if it works. Thanks again for your time !

  3. Great tutorial. Especially the tip with the switch expression at the begging. Very useful for creating assets that have some form of preview by default.

    I always wondered something about the assets, I have very basic knowledge of Houdini. Can you export an asset with 2 or more different materials (or selections, or vertex maps or whatever works) so that when you make something in houdini and export it as an asset you can apply 2 materials or more on it in Cinema 4d?
    I’m really interested in this,because there are also some tutorials on this site, for example, double mesh one, that could be interesting to be transformed in an asset, but their main idea is based on the capacity to put 2 different materials on 2 different surfaces.

    • That’s a nice idea for the Next Houdini Asset tutorial.
      But overall, yes it is possible to do that, and it’s fairly easy.
      Stay tuned!

  4. Is there a way to apply c4d’s vertex maps (weight maps) to houdini assets such as this one? In order to apply the map tag an object needs to be an editable mesh, and I can’t figure out how to do this without breaking the asset. Any ideas?

    • I know it’s a bit late, but here’s an answer nevertheless.
      It’s a misconception that you should add anything to a output generator (generated Asset Geometry).
      That’s just the result from the Asset.
      The way to input data (“marshal” data to the engine), is to add your Vertex map to the original C4D object, and input that in the asset.
      Any vertex map, will then be interpreted as an Attribute in the Engine.

    • Here’s a zip containing a very simple asset, and a C4D project.
      https://noseman.org/downloads/Paint_Object_Asset.zip

      I have 2 object inputs, one is the Cloner and the other is the clone.
      The asset copies the Clone on each vertex and expects a “pscale” attribute.
      That attribute is supplied by the Vertex map on the C4D object.
      Paint on that tag and see what happens.

      • Bob from Beyond

        How can you have it generate vertex maps from attributes Houdini creates?

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