Sergi Carrion
Image demonstrating the UI of the tool to publish Digital Assets from Houdini to Unreal Engine 5.

Genesys Houdini & Unreal Engine 5 Pipeline

01

Problem

New and existing artists faced a slow, error-prone setup every time they needed Houdini to work with our world building tools.

New and existing devs in our team (technical artists and engine programmers alike) also had a slow time doing so:

  • ✅ Verifying network and game-data drives were mounted
  • ❌ Manually killing any running Houdini instances
  • 🐍 Creating & activating a Python virtual environment
  • 💻 Installing VS Code extensions and pip packages
  • 📥 Downloading the correct Houdini build
  • ⚙️ Configuring houdini.env, startup packages, and ExternalEditor.cfg
  • 🗂️ Tracking updates across multiple Houdini versions

All these manual steps led to wasted time, misconfigurations, and a surge of support tickets.

02

Solution

I built a console-based Python installer (powered by Rich) that automates the entire pipeline:

  1. Pre-flight checks
    • Confirms required drives are available
    • Gracefully shuts down any active Houdini processes
  2. Environment provisioning
    • Creates & activates isolated Python virtual environments
    • Installs VS Code extensions and pip packages
  3. Houdini management
    • Downloads and installs the correct builds for multiple versions
    • Configures houdini.env, startup packages, and ExternalEditor.cfg
  4. Auto-update system
    • Compares local vs. server versions
    • Prompts users to update, launches a detached updater, then restarts seamlessly

Everything is bundled via PyInstaller and Inno Setup, so the whole team can install or update with just a couple of clicks.

03

Outcome

  • ⏱️ Setup Time Reduced to Minutes: Developers can now go from zero to a fully configured Houdini + UE5 environment.
  • 📨 70% Fewer Support Tickets: Eliminating manual steps slashed configuration-related tickets by seventy percent.
  • 🎨 More Focus on Creativity: Artists spend less time troubleshooting and were ready to jump into UE5 and start using world building tools in just a few minutes.
  • 🎨 More Focus on Creating Tools: Technical Artists spend less time installing, asking questions, and worrying about the development environment.