Houdini Indie

Very excited for this release, seems like Houdini can now be used for game development at a way affordable price!

http://www.sidefx.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=2853&Itemid=66

 

So delicious! And this bad boy has still has all the meat on his bones, unlike maya lt

 

Now that is a juicy price. I remember about a year ago testing the demo and the animation features were an absolute wonder to use.

Methinks.....methinks.....should i buy.....should I buy????

 

This is a game changer. I longed for this day to come.

RIP Maya LT.

 

Just bought Houdini Inide. Cheers!

 

Oooh I like that they're basically using Unity's $100k/year arrangement too, which is quite fair for indies. Now we just need Autodesk to follow suit

 

Yeah this is the thing that a lot of people are going to struggle over. Houdini is nothing at all like Maya or really any other 3D application. While you can model directly in it with edit nodes, it's not quite the same. The real appeal is in the procedural workflows which - being originally aimed at visual effects - are very data-centric, which gives you a lot of power.

It's nice, it makes you think a lot deeper about what you doing because there are often many ways to achieve the same ends, but as many users will agree it means while complex things can be done easily, simple things can be a chore.

I'd suggest checking out the XSI Users forum section on their website, which was set up as a welcome/primer for Softimage users thinking of switching when the proverbial hit the fan earlier in the year. There's a lot of talk about ICE, but in particular the modeling improvements threads hilight many of the pros and cons of modeling in Houdini vs traditional software.

Definitely check it out if you're curious as it is a hard one to put down once it clicks. There's a ton of tutorial material both on the SideFX website and elsewhere (both commercial & free...quite a few links on the SFX website again). A lot is for older versions - and H14 is due soon - and none is really aimed at games, but most of the workflow principles still apply.

On the subject of H14, there's supposed to be a UI overhaul, so all or some this might be moot. Interesting times.

 

Wow this is great news! I will look at some videos of Houdini over the weekend. And hopefully there's a trial version to actually give it a try.

 

Just download. The bundle also seems to includes the free Apprentice version. It should be fully functional, but renders with a watermark.

What i heavily dislike is that you have to register with a social account like Google or Facebook. And that they read this content then, to connect it with their database. Not very user friendly to collect all available data. More a second NSA here ...

 

I see there's a whole site on using Houdini for game development. Including a whole section on Unity.
http://www.gametutor.com/live/home-live/

Unfortunately most of the courses require a membership payment. It's not that expensive though and may be a quick way to get up and running.

 

Haha, stopped at install when the software tries to get a license from the license server. A cryptic message pops up: Invalid machine name.

And that was it already with my Houdini experience ...

 

Logging in with social network accounts is optional - you see a lot of it these days as many people just can't be hassled with moar account logins.

If you go to login, there's a SideEffects specific option, 1st one in the list.

I'm guessing you're having a glass is half-full-and-leaky kind of Friday. The forums have a few threads with solutions for licensing issues, if you have the energy

 

No option found. And Houdini DID collect all the data from my social account then. There was no option to avoid that one neither.

I've been through this licensing issue with Houdini before. It was not the first time i tried to get this baby to work. I've even contacted the support back in the days. I run another computer now. And still no go. I guess i will save my energy this time, since it seems that it is still the same disfunctional license server crap as before.

But thanks for the advice

EDIT, tried a last time after a (not officially required) reboot just for fun, and now the licensing stuff worked. So when somebody else runs into the issue too, try a reboot.

 

Hi Tiles,
That's really odd. Like Pix10 mentions, there is a side effects login. You probably need to register for the forums.

@superpig:
Unfortunately, I haven't used maya in production for over 7 seven years, else I can probably help with maya -> houdini tutorials. If not, there are loads of tutorials on CMIVfx and other similar tutorial websites. I'd be interested to know what kind of tutorials would be good for Houdini + Unity - I could whip up some of them.

In other news, I also got my Houdini Indie license key a few minutes ago :3 This is groundbreaking for sure! Not sure what I'm going to use it for as I have Houdini FX in front of me for my day job lol. Supporting SESI I guess

 

Some FREE! Houdini learning resources:
Kim Goosens procedural modeling lectures
Peter Quint's Vimeo channel
SideEffects first steps series (check side bar for lots more tutorials)

And ofcourse Odforce the forums there are filled with intelligent disscussion and Houdini files that will help you solve problems and learn. Houdini scene files are a tremendous resource and are much easier to follow, dissect and get in the head of the person who made them than any other scene file I've used.

There is a lot more out there for learning Houdini, but this is enough to get started. You can download apprentice for free and get started learning for free.

 

Released early enough for SIGGRAPH and Unite... well done!

 

There will be more exciting Houdini indie news as it relates to unity coming soon. If you are going to Unite, you can find SideFX in space #22 and we are holding a small event. You can request an invite here:

http://www.sidefx.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=2817&Itemid=226

User Experience (especially modeling and rendering is being addressed in 14). More SideFX Learning materials for game makers will be created for 14 - until then material is available from gametutor.com.

PS - our login process gets basic info only such as name, email and country. You can opt out of future contacts or remain on email list for updates.

 

What are the advantages of Houdini vs Blender?

 

This is really interesting for me too. If somebody got some experiences and would like to share, I would really appreciate it!

Thanks guys!

 

Hi

I've been using Houdini for quite some time and it's really a dream to work in it.

I think the main difference to other packages is, that Houdini is incredible transparent and consistence. You never feel like you're lost and don't know what it's doing. It is all right there, you basically always see what the data is doing. And you have full control over it.
Things like, you want your normal pointing to a certain point.. or you want to store a certain information in your color attributes.. that's easy in Houdini and can than be used in Unity.
Also it's very pipeline friendly. If you need your models / date in Unity always a certain way, it's easy to set that up in Houdini.
And there's Houdini Engine, which let's you basically load in complex "Rigs" right into Unity. (Unfortunately not yet during run time). Think of it as visually programming Plugins for Unity.

Also, without a doubt, the Houdini Developers are some of the worlds best devs. I keep getting surprised just how consistence and beautifully designed this software is. If you get the hang of it, the sky is really the limit. I don't think you can say that from Blender, or any other app.

That being said, I do my modeling in Silo or ZBrush. Those are not it's strength (yet?).

 

Hi dany,

thanks for this nice answere. Houdini looks really interessting to me. But your last sentence leaves me wondering. If you don't use Houdini for modeling, for what do you use it? Rigging, Animation or uvunwrap? I am asking becuase I use 3D programs just for game art (no render films or so) most hard surface models. Right now I am just using Blender for all my modeling and uv work. Also having Substance Designer / Painter. I was wondering in which areas Houdini would be a an advantage.

Thanks for your answere!
Cheers!

 

From what i read in Houdini indie :
-Houdini Indie uses its own file format for saving scenes and assets
So are you able to export to FBX , or it is useless tool for games ?

 

Pretty sure they've also said you can export FBX. I think it's like Maya's LT version - it imports/exports fine, but the binary file format is deliberately incompatible with the full version (presumably to stop people from intermixing licenses).

 

You are right :


INTEROPERABILITY
Houdini Indie includes a wide range of file formats including FBX import and export and ALEMBIC import and export. The use of these formats falls under the same limited commercial license as the use of Indie Houdini itself.

 

Houdini is about proceduralism at its core and each operation you do is treated as some kind of node. It's very different from something like Blender (or any other modeling app) because it's not really designed for poly modeling. Houdini has a visual scripting approach to making meshes and fx, which can be really powerful but probably not as useful for modeling game assets (at least in the way that Blender/Maya/Modo are used). For applications like Unity they're working on the 'Houdini Engine' which lets the procedural setups that you create with Houdini work elsewhere, but if you really want to generate content for Unity you could probably handle most of that with the existing Unity scripting.

If you want to do anything fx related on the other hand, or generate lots of procedural content for a movie you're making or just have really good access and control over all the little bits of data in your scenes for some interesting uses, then Houdini is great. For hand made meshes there's still zbrush or whatever else you like to use.

 

Hi red2blue

I use it for rigging and animation.
But the strength is really when I use it as a pipeline tool. For example, I bake my normal maps in Houdini. I was able to do my own algorithm and pick them up in my own shader. Because I did it myself, I know exactly what it's doing and get perfect normal maps. It would be easy to customize this further.
I also bake depth maps from my camera, which I then use in a shader. For certain effects I also bake out maps that contain direction. For another effect, I store a direction in the color attributes, that a shader then uses to deform the geometry.

The strength of Houdini really shows during production. Instead of looking for a script / plugin, you will find yourself just fixing / doing it yourself. The cool part is, that, if you get the hang of it (which might be harder than other software), it get's very easy!

 

Hi dany,

thanks for clarifing this for me. That helps me a lot with my further ongoing. I just downloaded the free version and will give it a try. Maybe it can help me in any step of my pipline. It sounds promising .

Thanks a lot!
Cheers

 

Hi firalt,

also thanks to you for giving a deeper insight what can be achived with houdini and where are the strength. Sounds good and I will take a deeper look into it.

Cheers!

 

It is a better than Blender in these areas ?

 

Define "better" ;-)

Haven't really used Blender, the few times I had a look, I found it... messy.

Houdini on the other hand is so clean, that it's even easy to copy paste a rig (or parts of it) from one character to another and reconnect / readjust what's needed. I never dared to do that in Maya or XSI. The cool thing about Houdini is, that there's nothing going on "under the hood", nothing that can break your scene, that can't be fixed (well unless it's a major bug). If you're a control freak like me, that's the software to learn ;-)

Some people might not know this, but Houdini is not some new tool. It is very old (re-architectured a few times). It's still the facto standard in very heavy VFX shots. The shots which are the most complex and custom are often tackled with Houdini. Many big VFX facilities have small Houdini teams that do that kind of heavy lifting, while the "easier" and more straight forward work is done by Maya / XSI artists.
All this years SideFX have stayed independent, which allowed them to slowly grow and make the best tool they can to target their market.

From an architectural point of view it compares more to Nuke / Fusion than to say Blender / XSI / Maya.

 

Houdini Indie and Houdini Engine indie just hit the Unity Asset Store today.

 

I'm not really following the use of this, or perhaps in our particular situation it just doesn't have one? We have Maya and Cinema4D that are used to animate all our characters. Does Houdini augment those in some way?

 

Houdini does have a fully featured animation and rigging pipeline, and supports the Mixamo workflow as well. There is lots of material on the SESI site about character work in Houdini.

Full disclosure: I work for SESI and getting Houdini Indie released has been my full time job for the past year.

 

This looks like an amazing use of houdini in unity: https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/content/21931

 

The procedural workflow looks really cool!

 

I will get it if they can offer licenser similar to Unity’s personal license.