LANDSHÖVDINGEHUS GENERATOR (EXAM THESIS)

• THE IDEA
A building generator tool made in Houdini focused on local Gothenburg architecture, letting the user generate "landshövdingehus" (governor house) inside Unreal Engine, utilizing the Houdini Digital Asset (HDA) pipeline.

• WHAT I DID
My initial goal was to develop a custom tool based on Houdini’s existing building generator functionalities (Labs Building Generator and Labs Building from Patterns), both of which have their strengths and weaknesses. However, due to the project's time constraints, I chose to use Labs Building Generator as a foundation and enhance it with custom functionality. I found this approach to be the most effective for handling user input geometry.

To generate and control the unique characteristics of landshövdingehus, the tool processes input geometry divided into three categories:
- Guide geometry – Forms the main structure of the building.
- Additive geometry – Creates extruded elements on the upper floors.
- Subtractive geometry – Allows for insets or 45-degree corners.

To enable parameter control within Unreal Engine, these parameters are first created in Houdini and linked to different parts of the node tree. They are then exposed in Unreal Editor’s details panel, making it easy for users to modify elements such as windows, doors, and wooden facades with simple toggles.

• FURTHER IMPROVEMENT
The tool is far from perfect, and there's still need of a lot of bugfixes, especially regarding materials and input geometry. In its current state, it can be a bit of a hassle getting the different building modules to place properly, because of the way the input geometry needs to be overlapping and/or not overlapping at certain angles. I'm sure some modification and new programming to the "Labs Building Generator"-tool in Houdini will make it work much smoother.

For a more in-depth overview of this thesis project, see the full report here:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1JO6mFai8TzLktxNSUNzYshRzOmzpqu9N/view?usp=sharing