Use SideFX Labs' Vertex Animation Textures Tool With Houdini's PDG

Vertex Animation Textures 3.0 is part of Houdini's open-source toolset called SideFXLabs. In case you missed it, VAT stands for Vertex Animation Textures and is an efficient and powerful solution to recreate complex simulations in real-time. Because VAT only uses textures and shaders to achieve the visuals on the GPU, it has a much lighter performance impact on the CPU compared to traditional skeletal mesh animations. VAT is widely used in games, motion graphics, virtual production, real-time exhibitions, and more.

This new short tutorial demonstrates how to use Houdini's Procedural Dependency Graph to automate variation creation, caching, and exporting of VAT assets to Unreal Engine and comes with a downloadable UE 5.3 demo project.

You can get the example Houdini file here, download the UE demo file, and follow this tutorial to master this technique:

If you wish to learn how to use the VAT tool, check out this full guide in two parts presented by SideFX Labs:

In the past, we've also shared other SideFX Labs' tools and assets worth checking out, for example, this cool Lightning Generator:

Or this Flipbook Textures tool, rendering and compositing flipbook textures with multiple passes to allow for fully dynamic real-time relighting, so you do not have to bake lighting scenarios into the colors.

Learn more about using VAT with Houdini's PDG here and don't forget to join our 80 Level Talent platform and our Telegram channel and follow us on Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn, where we share breakdowns, the latest news, awesome artworks, and more.