Houdini for Mac

http://www.sidefx.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1215&Itemid=66

oh yeah! :wink:

 

AWESOME!!! Totally, totally cool!!!

Gary

 

that or endorphin for the mac

 

that's great news.

i wonder whether sidefx are planning to release an exporter that works with unity. especially as they now have one for torque.

 

For which kind of work is Houdini good for and why?

 

traditionally Houdini has been great for complex visual effects and procedurally generated environments as it has a very flexible node-based workflow.

more recently, side effects have updated the tools available to character animators, it's got a pretty good rigging/musculature setup now so it's not bad for character work.

it still has a relatively small user base though, and is a little tricky to get into for those who are used to a more conventional approach to 3d.

 

Anyone have it?
Anyone is able to try it and tell us how it works with unity?

I really want to try it.

 

Houdini is great. It's in my book the coolest thing to happen to Macs in ages.

You will have to spend some time with the program before you'll really get the picture. Procedural modeling makes life soooo much easier.
If Unity were to directly support Houdini I'd be pleased as punch. I know that it's being used at Guerilla Games for Killzone2 and I think it's occasionally used at EA Tiburon.

The way things are situated at the moment you couldn't really use it for character animation without writing your own export tools. As far as 3d goes you can import Collada, FBX, Obj, geo, bgeo, ply, and rib. You can export all of that except FBX and Collada, and additionally DTS and DIF (Torque formats). The Torque tools were written by GarageGames crew so Unity support would have to come from Unity crew... however, FBX export is in the works.
In general though Houdini makes a great addition to almost anyones toolset.

 

public beta is out:

intel only.

bet interesting to see how well the FBX exported work in unity...

http://www.sidefx.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1277&Itemid=66

cheers.

 

Yep, it's pretty nice. It's still beta for sure though so don't expect it to behave nicely yet. When 9 went beta it was pretty messy until release.
Still I'm hoping that the performance equals Linux. Windows can't even come close to the performance you get with a good Linux install and I'm picturing Mac Houdini to out-perform windows at least.
We have a MacPro I'm testing with here at work and it's been kinda buggy so far. Interface issues; DOPs are slightly underperforming, but the new features added in 9.5 are great. FBX is working really well. I've been moving files between XSI, Modo, and Houdini with fairly good results (*fairly* meaning a lot of my rigs need to be retooled).