Houdini is now free for Unreal and Unity engine.
You still must buy an Houdini license to create Houdini procedural content (for those who did not understood).
I admit it has impressive features coming.
I guess the target group here are GameDevs who do not want to use Houdini itself to create stuff, but who want to buy/acquire assets from Houdini users.
For some reason ( one I do not really understand) the marketplace for Houdini assets was gated behind a Houdini License as one could not get an Houdini Engine running without a license.
I guess they finally realized that this is like shooting oneself and the H.users in the foot, so this financial transaction is now removed and anybody can just import Houdini assets into UE4/Unity.
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I guess you’re right, Houdini see this as another way to make more people buy Houdini licenses,
making plugins to sell; while they don’t have their own plugins store if i’m not wrong.
Also beeing able to get or buy plugins and not beeing able to modify or create new ones won’t suit everybody.
But i recognize some free basic plugins usable with Houdini free engine; is already a game changer for procedural assets creation
Blender is just starting to grow on “nodes stuff”, but it’s a good start already.
I guess we will be able to create such procedural tools in Blender when nodes will grow more
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It has nothing to do with directly making more people buy Houdini licenses when they actually stopped forcing people to buy licenses in this case. They just increase the reach of their users, which indirectly might increase the usage of Houdini in that market segment since more Game-devs come into contact with it.
They should have done this a long time ago.
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we are far beyond blender features !
And i bet this houdini properly unvrap UVs for texture mapping and offers real basic and mandatory fully working features before allowing all those procedural things ?
Glad to hear it comes now free ^^ i wish i had time to take a peek at it…
Did anyone do some things with this tool ? viewable in a vid ?
Just to be clear, 18.5 was released months ago so the features that you see in the sneak peek have now been in users’ hands for a while.
I predict that Epic will steer SideFX into making some version of Houdini freely available to Unreal users. I think that strategy is clear as day since it’s effectively what they did with Quixel. I think Epic was trying to buy Houdini outright but SideFX not being a public company wouldn’t sell, so they settled for the next best thing – i.e. own a huge chunk of it to influence the direction of the company.
This video summarize well some already available few possibilities
I guess those tools will be possible in Blender with the new geometry nodes once it will grow.
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Quixel was a very small company and needed financial help, it’s different situation for Houdini.
Houdini is leader about procedural generation and FX, i don’t think they want to be sold to anyone.
Houdini is only one tool, more important are Substance Designer and Painter, as AA games does not require procedural tools as mandatory.
For Substance it’s Adobe and even Epic won’t be able influence company direction.
Houdini is just trying to get more money and popular on both Unreal and Unity.
No, they absolutely don’t want to sell.
I disagree.
They do not require Houdini, but actually certain games absolutely do require Houdini - the alternative of not using it would be so painful, that it could potentially double the budget (in terms of artists needed, time needed, money needed etc.) and that is an optimistic view.
Houdini’s potential power far outweighs any other tool in the pipeline and that includes Designer.
On the other side nobody will be in a situation to choose between Designer or Houdini, they’ll just use both.
IMHO it doesn’t matter if you doing an Indie game or A, AA or AAA+, not having Houdini in your pipeline could potentially be a fatal error.
Of course that is dependent on the game, some simply don’t need it, but I think these are in the minority by now.
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Hans is currently exploring primitive nodes.
https://wiki.blender.org/wiki/User:HooglyBoogly/Reports/2021/#February_22_-_February_28
The Houdini engine video for Unreal showed what is known as procedural content, which many engines can already do from code (even FOSS ones). The difference is that the content is delivered by the application that is the industry leader in procedural generation (not only that but more artist friendly too if you stick to prebuilt graphs), as a result I can see a lot of asset store vendors (for both engines) closing up shop within the next year or so.
I don’t see how you could come to that conclusion.
The only thing that has changes is the license (or lack thereof) for the end user (of Houdini assets).
Houdini has been there for years and they didn’t took over any asset store despite the engine being available for nearly every 3D program (and the 2 U-Engines).
Nice, the more possibilities with nodes the best.
Guerilla Games made their own procedural tools for terrain and other things directly in their engine for direct preview on the fly, it depends on your needs i guess and level of control you want.
It’s just what you need, what is the best solution for you.
I know Ubisoft find it cheaper to use Houdini for their latest games integrating it into their engine and making all tools with it.
Procedural can also be made by coders , or to some limit coded into 3D engines.
Houdini advantage is procedural tools become possible and easy with nodes for anyone without needing to code and not dependent on game engine.
Fortunatelly Blender will continue to grow about geometry nodes.
If Houdini can generate the entire city procedurally at your finger tip, I’m sure game dev would need less artist, right? Also if a “city generator” is finished, why would they need to keep the Houdini artist? It sounds like win-win.
No you need artists to make original concepts, you need artists for making unique textures, you just
need a Houdini node modeler instead of a pure modeler you’ll keep for all that is not procedural and unique models.
Also city generator means repetition of many patterns and design, if you want a unique city with lot of unique buildings and lof ot unique places you’ll need a modeler and not a procedural modeler.
For indies procedural is a must have.
Therefore, less of human modeller needed.
Sure, Indie will love it, and big studios will love it, too.