Situation:
- It is difficult to work with instanced static meshes in the context of this project.
- Randomization in Maria's Houdini project isn't working in an Unreal Engine environment.
- The intersection UV system needs to be tested.
Task:
- The instanced static mesh spawning system needs to be converted to actor spawning to be able to add things like tile states and inter-tile interaction.
- Research possible fixes for the Houdini issue.
- Work out concept in Unreal.
Action:
- I changed the system from instanced static meshes to actors fairly easily. I could reuse the transform array that held all the different arrays of the tiles from the previous system. I also implemented the building meshes using Mathijs' tile switch system (have all the meshes loaded on top of the tile, and enable/disable visibility when switching states).
- I have checked various things in both Unreal and Houdini, however none seemed to work. I was able to connect a node with a randomized value using a reference to another node to get the randomization to work in Houdini, but when this was imported into Unreal the reference to the other node didn't seem to work anymore. I also tried to edit the randomization value through an Unreal blueprint, but there was no way to access this value. I had checked various forum posts, and most of them said it wasn't possible or it might be possible soon.
- I made the UV system work in Unreal using different UV channels. This is unfortunately not the way I intended to do it before. I initially intended to rotate/edit the individual UV shells within the same UV channel as I had done that before in Unity, but this option wasn't available in Unreal. I later remembered that we had decided to use modular meshes instead of UV editing to make the intersection system work, so this idea had to be scrapped anyway.
Result:
- The actor spawning worked nicely. I made sure to place the actors underneath the parent blueprint actor within the outliner to keep things organized. There was a hitbox issue with the building meshes before where the state switching didn't work properly (clicking on a tile made the tile in front of it change states), but this was improved on by also disabling collision when a mesh was turned invisible.
- I unfortunately wasn't able to fix the issue and thus had to give up on it. Maria let me know that she was going to ask a person she knew who has better experience with Houdini.
- The UV system works now, but won't be used.
Actor spawning changed and building meshes added:
UV rotation system (image in texture was for testing purposes, please ignore):
Reflection:
- Instanced static meshes are great for performance, but are ideally used for visual changes and aren't great for fundamental system operations. Later in the week there were some other hitbox issues mentioned by Mathijs, so we will look into next week. I am planning on implementing a simple outline on the currently selected tile for debugging purposes.
- Houdini is nice for concepting stuff in Unreal, but the interaction between the two software isn't fully realised. That or I haven't fully explored the capabilities of them. However, it seemed difficult to work with or access certain important features of the Houdini project. Might suggest Unreal blueprint system for randomization of buildings if this is necessary.
- It is important to check on the current status of a task before starting it. It was a good learning experience to see how Unreal works with UVs.
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