Bolt, Washer & Nut Generator: Houdini → Unreal

One of the problems my company was facing was that across our different projects, we had a variety of different styles for screws - if the threads were textures or modeled, if they were pitched or not, if we included threads at all, if we textured or modeled the sockets, our style was all over the place! To resolve all of that inconsistency, and let our artists spend less time on boring, repetitive assets, I created a fastener generator in Houdini for use in Unreal. The size parameters matched up with our socket and hand tool generators, and nuts and washers were driven by the same size parameters as the bolts, so it all matched up perfectly without the usual trial and error (and QA bugs)! As a bonus, I could automatically generate mesh sockets for the engineers to use in their blueprints, so that they could be ligned up automatically with the larger assemblies. Using a rigid body simulation, I could also bake in a socket for how the fastener should snap to the ground when dropped.