Immersive VR Fantasy Environment

Will TzsFx
Jul 13, 2023
3 min read

Updated: Jul 30, 2023

5th Jan 2023

Wanted to try creating my very own fantasy VR immersive experience environment. This is what I came up with during my own down time. Any images & video preview that can be show-case here does not do this piece justice to the actual real VR experience of the environment!

Very happy how this turn-out to be given this is my 1st attempt trying out this interesting VR project.

Quick turnaround preview of the VR environment

environment turnaround preview - main view (vid above)

environment turnaround preview - top view (vid above)

Trying out environment in VR - Pico 4

testing out environment in VR - Pico 4 (vid above)

Breakdowns of the project

Generating cat's hair / fur for Unreal material in Houdini

For the both the White cat & Black cat's fur / hair, I've made a fur / hair procedural generation tool in Houdini. This tool can help generate a wide variation if fur / hair on a flat sheet.
This will then be use to bake out various useful maps & passes to be use in Unreal material.

Working on cat's 9 tails in Houdini

For the tail, it is one of the hardest part of the project to work on.
I have very limited knowledge to tackle hair / fur material in Unreal. Let alone these hair / fur have to conform with the tail animation in Unreal.
1. For the cat's fur card mesh - generated procedurally in Houdini (groom) > converted to cards (for optimization) > UE5 hair material
2. I then decided to approach with a predefined animated rigged tail mesh with fur / hair cards on it, conforming with the animation
3. I utilized Houdini's Kine-Fx procedural rigging & animation tools to generate the joints system. Then rigged & skinned the tail meshes
4. Then used a wrangle expression code to automatically animate the tail swaying animation (progression preview shown in video below)

Rigging & animation for small kitten in Houdini

Similar approach to the 9 tail meshes, it is applied to this kitten & both the black and white cats as well.
Rigged & animated all in Houdini in a semi-procedural way then exported into Unreal

Looping animating Koi Fish fx

A single fish model was use with different texture variation
Similar rigging approach applied to fish mesh
1. Animation done by using wrangle expression code to automate animation
2. A slight animation manipulation in Houdini to make animation fully loop seamlessly
The fish animation is then exported as a VAT (vertex animation) mesh & texture to be used in Unreal's VAT material
1. This approach can significantly reduce graphic cost compared to exporting a mesh with joints, skinning & animation data
2. As this only export a single unique fbx mesh & a few VAT texture
To make the fish swim in a continuous loop in a specific path, a path curve is prepared in Houdini > points are then constrained to the given path
Points are then animated along path with looping start & end > exported as Niagara cache to be used in Unreal Niagara
The VAT fish mesh & Niagara point cache can then come together in Niagara fx to create these amazing Koi fish fx (quick simple breakdown video below)