Today I see that Houdini Engine Indie has changed to free*.
But the question: ¿anybody knows how to interconect or sync MAYA>UNREAL ENGINE without using “import fbx” constantly?
After import, all geometries are placed in world origin 0,0,0.
¿Is there a tutorial or workflow progress about maya > to > unreal?
Thanks in advance.
"Houdini Engine Indie is available as a free download for Windows, Linux and Mac OS X. The plugins linking the engine to its host apps are also free downloads.
There is a limit of three licenses per studio, and to qualify, developers must make less than USD $100,000/year. "
Checking out their site, I’m still confused. What is Houdini and how can it benefit us in game development?
From what I understand, it’s not a game engine but a platform to create 3D models, worlds, and particle effects? Of which can be imported to Maya, EU, and Unity?
Your topic is bit misleading. Houdini Engine Indie is free if you qualify for it’s terms. Houdini Indie itself still costs 199$/year. They are two different products.
oh yeah. the plugin needs to be copied manually into UE and then it can load the otl files houdini saves.
tried a marketplace asset and it works like a charm. basically all of the parameters chosen to be live in houdini can be edited in unreal.
its ridiculously fantastic.
and houdini engine is not dependent on standalone app but is used as a “player” for the files. if you want advanced editing ofcourse you need the standalone.
once the asset store is well populated, people will be able to use and customize assets like fire and smoke without needing to know deeper levels of houdini. (as i am doing). houdini store is called orbolt but its not exactly poppin over there.
this marriage is something incredible and imo you all should try it out.
here is something that perhaps shows it better then i could explain:
houdini is unlike any other app. it is a procedural software where each and every bit is broken down and can be edited non destructively. its not unlike a blueprint actually.
this makes endless iterations of assets a breeze (by tweaking the exposed parameters), which you can do now in unreal.
bring in one house and create a whole town out of unique instances with different merely parameter settings.
houdini is also top of the line in vfx and those tools too can be used in unreal.
maybe this helps:
there are tons of tutorials on houdini but its not something you just pickup. thats the downside. i am going at it in phases.
There really should be a like button on this forum, thanks I appreciate it. Ultimatley, if the time to learn offsets the workflow gains then it’s definitley worth looking into.
very kind of you, thanks.
you put it exactly right. imo considering things on the long run, houdini is best invesment one can make, apart from UE ofcourse.
reason being that by learning it, you constantly have to work on the logic side of things. one needs to break down the process, and the nodeflow has to work.
that sort of knowledge translates very well into all other apps but not vice versa because most of the programs are walled gardens with interfaces specific to themselves.
considering the technical high level UE community has, i dont think the learning curve is even that steep.
Houdini is a beautiful beast. Its procedural, non-destructive nature makes it paradise for developers. But, even though the latest version offered new tools, it’s not good for standard modeling yet. I’m waiting for Houdini 16.
yes some more mundane tasks are slower that they could be.
15 brought alot of modelling improvements and 16 will do too for sure. side effects is one of those trailblazing companies actually commited to making the best possible product, unlike autodesk which is concentrated on having the best looking excell sheets.
buy houdini indie and learn it at your own pace.
for 200 bucks its an absurdly good deal and you will be supporting a great thing.
What’s the general workflow for working with Houdini? I see that they have a simple modelling piece, but I am wondering how best to approach the software.
Are modular pieces usually imported into a Houdini object, then the software manipulates them (based on the rules you give it)?
How about the FX pieces? Do those work well with UE4?
I am searching for documentation on some of this to see if it’s something i should start to learn for my workflow, but the overall amount of information on Houdini/UE seems pretty sparse.
Can the Houdini engine create instances for UE4 or only real duplicated meshes–say for an array of fence posts? Is smoke and fire supported? How about cloth simulation? Rag dolls animation?
its a bit of disservice to houdini for me to be the one evangelizing about it, so its best to some research on your own. that said:
houdini is all about breaking down the process.
take a staircase for example. it consists out of the actual stairs, railing and a balustrade.
balustrade can be a lathe based object, stares and railings are primitives. you pipe these elements together and then set rules to define each one and their relations.
height, width, number of stairs, the crossection of railing and balustrades can be also (depending how you set it up) freely and non destructively edited, retaining uv maps.
this gives artistic freedom and again makes iterating extremely easy. its also a lifesaver in scenarios when dealing with clients and sudden drastic changes.
i really think that people with a grasp on blueprints could flow with houdini quite well.
i never made my own node network though. usually i used it for clouds. for instance you can bring in any mesh and convert it into a volume with one click by using off the shelf solution. the cloud even has a noise function to control the advection of the volume.(making it smoother or a noisier cloud).
you can then at any moment dive into the nodes and try to reverse engineer what is going on, if you have no patience for tutorials like me.
apprentice version is free and can be used non commercially, but you lose any crossoperability aswell.
you dont need to look for H/UE specific tutorials. the workflow is as simple as importing the otl or any houdini file and treat it as a regular mesh, only with the extras of the exposed parameters. so you do not deal with a dead mesh but a live asset.
there is a clip showing houdini fire in unreal. will try and find it.
