Fuse.VAT Extension including examples for Vertex Animation Textures (VAT) inside VL.Fuse

FUSE contribution
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So ive created some Nodes and examples how to use VAT Vertex Animation Textures in Fuse.


First i thought these could be added as help patches but then i ended up creating some common nodes like a VatFrameplayer etc. Ofcourse it would be great to have this in Fuse, but the exr and tif files from the examples are also 100mb, so not sure if things like this should be extensions or included into Fuse.
In my opinion using VAT with particles is a nice way to get keyframed control which many clients want / Need or sync up particles with video content.

Based on SideFX Houdini GameDevelopment Toolset:


using examples from keijiro’s Unity implementation

The main goals for this package is to provide examples for the most common VAT and Pivot Painter implementations used by Unreal und Unity.

The next steps:

  1. Getting it to work with the Fuse PBR Pipeline
  2. Create examples for Epics unreal tools - Blender VAT Exporter Plugin https://github.com/JoshRBogart/unreal_tools
  3. Various blender Pivot Painter Plugins
  4. Unpack Normals from alpha
  5. Clean up everything to a nice set of Fuse functions

There are a lot of examples i would like to include, but it would also be very helpful if anyone could send some example 3D project or exported VAT files. The concept is always similar but they often differ slightly, so it would be nice to have a few examples for common exporters / 3d packages.
( oh and naming and patch structure is all over the place :"3 )

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2

This is really cool, nice one!

Happy to schedule a session if you like to look at it together. Could probably help to get the Stride materials working & maybe some example Houdini exports. We could also look at what would make sense to include in Fuse directly

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HI @gegenlicht

I cloned GITHUB/vjgegenlicht/VL.Fuse.VAT → yes, outdated FuseVersion but I could, with my half knowledge of Fuse, port it to Fuse Version 1.0.3-beta03 and VVVVGamma Stable 6.5 here are the files without content/assets from the github
GITHUB/vjgegenlicht/VL.Fuse.VAT/tree/main/content/assets
VL.Fuse.VAT.zip (2.6 MB)

It does something but not correct

Is there something similar for VAT in actual Fuse? Are there other ways to use Vertex Animation Textures in VVVV Gamma? Or possible to reactivate this nice contribution? I think I got some steps to a reactivation but not sure what and why happens and these ShaderStuff it’s still little bit weird for me.

Greetings CeeYaa

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hey there, yes ive ported some of this and can have another look. i guess now this would be a material extension. Ive also done another attempt using the a structured buffer created from the mesh, which kind of works but needs more love. Would be interesting to know what type of animation you are trying to get to work and in which context:

How do you generate the VAT textures?
A single high res mesh or animate instances in a particle system?

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Thanks for the quick answer.
Until now, nothing specific in Export of VAT - I was asked by a Houdini User how the VAT Situation is in VVVV Gamma - so I had a look at your contribution with your Files and your links for Research and Export.
I can also ask in the other direction (the Houdini User) what exactly should be played back or Controlled by VVVV and VAT. I think a ruff description would be a tree with leaves or plant influenced by wind intensity – Sounds like meshdeforming and transformations blending VAT-Textures - so I think it’s more about a single high res mesh - VAT is for me also new land

1 Like
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sounds interesting, let me know when you have details could also have a look once you have example assets. For tree animation there are example where also pivot points are baked into a texture or the mesh vertexcolor to transform individual in branches or leafs in a more controlled or weighted way. But this example sounds like a material extension would be the way to go. As far as i know most problems ive had in the first iteration, like missing availability of attributes etc have been solved in fuse by now.

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Hey ive had fixes for the help patches on my pc already and now just merged them to the main branch. no idea when i did this but its there now :) But be aware this is all using older VAT1 and VAT2 examples. Houdini is now using a slightly different way of exporting in VAT3. Hopefully we will be able to include this all into fuse. If you have any example .hip or already exported assets that would be very helpful.

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hello @gegenlicht
here is a shared folder with a very basic rigid body vat setup using houdini 20 the hip file is included.

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Thanks, would you know the export settings or preset used?

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Cubefaces file
Preset unreal engine using VAT 2.0 it’s a old test i did last year
rigidbody file
used the unreal engine preset using latest VAT 3.0 exporter

image
image855×696 89 KB

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