This R&D focuses on creating procedural animation in Houdini for hero character VFX.

The main challenge was to create a high-quality cinematic effect using Houdini alongside other DCC tools, while keeping a large part of the motion and deformation procedurally driven.

Different elements of the effect were exported to Unreal Engine using workflows such as VAT (Vertex Animation Textures) and Alembic Geometry Caches, depending on the type of animation. VAT can be used for efficiently playing back complex mesh deformation with consistent topology, while Alembic is better suited for elements that require topology-changing or more complex cached geometry animation.

Once inside Unreal Engine, these animated elements were further enhanced with shaders, particles, and additional real-time VFX layers.

The main idea was to use animated and deforming geometry as the foundation of the effect, rather than relying only on traditional static meshes animated through transforms and shader effects.

This approach provides a much richer base for character VFX, allowing complex deformation and procedural motion to come directly from Houdini while still giving Unreal Engine control over the final look through materials, particles, timing, and gameplay or cinematic integration.