Welp, when Adobe dropped the hammer and told the world that subscription was the ONLY way moving forward for their wares, the Internet was set ablaze with folks on differing sides arguing how they refuse to become beholden to paying a company for the privilege to have access to their content in the future if they were to come off the subscription, and then there were the folks saying meh, I’m willing to pay…
The argument still rages today, if you take a minute or two on any forum to look for the topics - I’m not interested in carrying on that same debate - perpetual or non-perpetual/subscription licensing, and frankly I wouldn’t mind paying SideFX $200/year for having access to the awesome Houdini.
But as an (ahem), “Indie” - or more honestly, “Hobbyist”, my pockets, and common-sense tells me not to pay for software, to then lose access to it if I stop paying for it.
And frankly, if I were to EVER make $10K, using 'Alle’s tools, I’d be the first in line to buy that commercial license - I already have a commercial license for Substance Designer v3.x, I just opted to buy the Indie license for SD v4 and Painter simply to save myself some money because I’m not making money off my software licenses at this point in time.
Same for UE4 - PLEASE, let me get to the point where I need to start giving my 5% to Epic, I have no problem and would be quite happy to do so. I’ve seen others say the same thing.
I’m happy to show my support to Epic for making their AAA Unreal Engine accessible to pretty much anyone with a dream to play, experiment or seriously endeavor to make games.
I love what Epic and has done for the games development community, I personally don’t appreciate SideFX coming in talking “Indie”, with a license leaving folks with nothing in hand to show for it once the payments stop…
-Will
PS - And I’ll add, I absolutely agree, what SideFX does with how they support and develop Houdini is absolutely top notch, I agree w/you 100%, but cmon, SideFX, take that , look at the loving support shown to Epic and 'Alle by their communities, generosity begets generosity.
Why not let folks keep what they have if they go off subscription?
This idea of being left with nothing when you choose to end your subscription is a massive exaggeration, unless you didn’t actually do anything productive with the software while you had access to it in the first place. Even in the case of Adobe’s products there are other programs that can open PSD’s AI, PDF etc. There are formats other than native adobe formats to save in, giving you more options in choice of software. With Houdini you can open the files you make in Indie, in the free Apprentice version, of course when you save in Apprentice they will be in the non-commercial format and your export options will be very limited. Of course in Indie you can always export to any of the formats that Houdini supports, which include fbx and alembic. If someone gets left with nothing after a year subscription it’s due to personal negligence.
I personally do appreciate Side Effects getting in on the Indie scene and offering their fully featured software at a pittance, I don’t see anything disingenuous about it. Especially after Autodesk’s weak indie offering of MayaLT.
I personally appreciate it also, I had signed up to their forums a couple of years back just to write a singular post asking them to please consider at the time a ~$500 - $1200 “Indie” license that was resolution limited to say 2K, but allowed commercial usage.
Well here we are today, and they’ve decided $200 but chose not to give you a perpetual license.
Even with Apprentice HD, you still had access to it if you decided not to upgrade any further.
That’s all I’m asking, for them to show the same spirit for Artists, hobbyist and indies as these other companies have done. Is that really so bad? Are you saying you’d prefer NOT to have a perpetual license for your Houdini license?
As far as Adobe, I have Adobe After Effects CS6 - what package do you suggest I move on to to use my AfterFX files? I’ve already bought into Hitfilm Ultimate to future proof myself, but currently HF is NOT a replacement for AfterFX and it certainly can’t open AFX projects…
And exactly what part about not being able to open your Houdini files after you’re off subscription is a “massive exaggeration”? Either the program will launch, and you can use it or it will launch and pop an “Invalid License” dialog with a nice helpful “buy now” link somewhere at the bottom.
At this point I think you fully understand my stance on this Aabel, we don’t need to keep going back and forth on this.
I’m not calling SideFX “evil” or anything like that, I was just truly disappointed to see the choice they made for their Houdini “Indie” license is not a perpetual one - I’m still **hoping **they’ll change their minds on this later…
Where is C4D 15 850ish? I thought it was $3600+, I’m a version 12 user and the upgrade cost is still expensive, basically buying it all over again. I must be looking at something different on Maxon’s website.
I was recently considering Autodesk Max/Maya and leaning towards Maya, and then this dropped. I’m going to give Houdini a go. At $200.00 for a year’s use… I can’t realistically pass this up.
@WillBell, the only thing I see that you don’t have access to is your scene files if you don’t pay to continue your license, as you can export FBX, or Obj files at any time. I have read your posts and it seems you want it all at Internet speeds. Rome wasn’t built in a day, and I’m happy they’ve taken this first step. Very happy.
Big Houdini fan here! I’ve been using it on a few personal game projects and it’s awesome! There’s no equivalent for the procedural and flexible workflow Houdini has. Now if only their uv tools would get better
Houdini pioneered the free version and low-cost feature extended version concept with Apprentice and Apprentice HD over a decade ago. And this was when Houdini was $17k per seat.
is effectively HD with the commercial features unlocked (most notably FBX and Alembic export). $199 is less than, I could easily imagine, most people working in their bedroom spend on cola in a year.
I own FX (the $5k version) and I’m both impressed and bemused, because you’re getting for $199 what I paid $5k for. So don’t complain!
Being a Houdini artist and all I can say is that this is bloody amazing software and the Indie version is a bloody amazing opportunity. But if you’re the glass is half empty type, you may not have what it takes to learn to use it anyway as it really does take a lot of patience and a the-glass-is-getting-fuller attitude.
Don’t take offense at that btw, take it as a challenge
Ok, I never tried Houdini, and I have no idea why some peoples consider it so great.
Can some one experienced start to compare Housini vs Blender, Modo, Maya? No flame war or fan boy one, just a honest comparison with pro/con. You know some of us really dont have time to test the product for 1-3 months to make an idea, at least some advices and features exposed for game dev can be nice. Please, all comparison for game dev, I don’t care anyone of them are great for movies or anything else, only game dev specific.
I would also very much like to know. I tried downloading Houdini and I find the interface extremely confusing and hard to use, so I suppose you need quite a lot of training before being able to use it properly.
From what I’ve seen so far, the procedural way of creating objects using parameters and stuff seems to be the biggest difference from other applications.
The biggest difference between Houdini and everything else, is Houdini is completely non-destructive, unless you explicitly destroy the data yourself. Every other package is pretty much the exact opposite, even Max with it’s ‘stack’. The way that the non-destructive nature of Houdini is leveraged results in workflows that are completely open and adaptable to what ever task you are facing.
TDoro, spend some time on Youtube watching some of the videos already posted in this thread. If you can’t invest some time into doing your own research on the internet, which is incredibly easy these days, you might want to stay away from Houdini. Any way here is a site that focuses on Houdini as it applies to games: http://www.gametutor.com/live/home-live/ The engine stuff isn’t specific to Unity as that functionality is coming to UE4 as well.
Well I use it for game dev - not character animation (it’s been a long time), though it does have seriously powerful rigging. For the most part I build game assets as procedural resuable digital assets (HDAs) - everything from crates, rocks and barrels (junk) to buildings, spacecraft, bridges, mountains, destructables (it’s a world class VFX package, of course you’re going to tell your team “we need all this blown up too!” :)) whatever comes up. If you do a lot of props, you will eat proceduralism. Most of the time I just build everything in Houdini, but sometimes they can start life in Max, Modo or Rhino, and are brought in to Houdini and be repurposed into more customisable objects than they started off as, using the incoming data as reference or template data, and rebuilding around it. I also use it for 2D work … Houdini’s orthagonal camera has width (instead of just angles like Max’s camera), which is dead handy if you know what that means. Probably my favourite aspect though is the render outputs, if only because exporting (and keeping tabs on everything that needs exporting) is my least favourite past-time. So, exporting made fun. That probably sounds a bit weird, but it’s not.
In general it’s difficult to make a direct comparison with other software as Houdini’s workflow paradigm is pretty much unique for a 3D application, and this is part of the issue most people have when they open it up for the first time.
It doesn’t have a traditional modeling workflow as you’re used to with Max, Maya, Blender, C4D, Modo et al. The majority of your time is spent creating networks and learning how to manipulate geometry as data. It shouldn’t be that unusual to people these days - I mean, you like Blueprints, right? Imagine if you could combine your modelling workflow with blueprints, add options, variables and interfaces as you go along, passing data back and forth between objects and other blueprints. I think it’s harder for people who NEED a viewport, but if you love being in control of every little detail, it’s addictive.
It’s also a lot easier to pick up if you’re already interested in the technical side of 3D, but if you are it can be extremely rewarding, and you will learn a lot about 3D that it’s unlikely you’ll lean in other packages, because all the functionality isn’t hidden away behind presets and ready-made functions; these do exist, but they’re presented as building blocks and networks themselves that you can tear apart and customise, learn from.
The prodecural nature of Houdini isn’t just about non-destructive modelings and animation, it’s in it’s blood and core to everything you do throughout the application, in all contexts and even the UI - you build your own interfaces for the objects you create, the tools you build, bundling them as assets that can be re-used, shared, customised and extended as your needs change.
Houdini can be a tough nut, but not because it’s “hard”, but because there’s so much of it. But nobody needs everything all at once, and it’s well worth cracking because it’s quite simply stupidly powerful and crazy useful, not just for building and manipulating things but for managing them as well. Very difficult to describe because there are so many faces to it. It’s a good example of one of those applications nobody will ever master, because there’s always something new, some different way of doing something cool, and each new version upgrade is serious. No bug fix focus on major point versions (no need, they have daily builds).
Anyway, watch the First Steps and Next Steps tutorials at the Go|Procedural section of sidefx.com (even if you’re just wondering and haven’t downloaded it) to get an inkling of how things work… they’re mandatory first steps anyway, so everyone new to Houdini should be familiar with them before trying to get ambitious.
Beyond the basics there are plenty other resources, Peter Quint’s Vimeo collection is an excellent free repository of tuts, and you’ll find more, both free and $$ under the Learning tab at sidefx.com
Thanks for explanation Walternate, indeed that non destructive way of “modeling” sounds really useful, I will check out some more videos. I am just downloading Houdini free version right now and give it a try.
Important thing to note about this, is it’s dead *** easy to build custom interfaces for digital assets in Houdini. Building custom UI’s and workflows in Houdini is by far the easiest and most straightforward out of any of the 3d applications out there.
One of the really great things about Houdini is it lets you take whatever technical ability you have in 3d and take it so much further than you could in other applications, which only increases the amount of technical knowledge you have which allows you to go even further.
Once you start using Houdini you will come to outright despise other 3d applications and how they force you to throw away work and prevent you from re-using work.
The best way to get some answer is to post question on SESI Labs forum. 99% of Houdini community is onodForce or SESI. Developers jump in on odForce too, but for Houdini Engine, SESI Labs forum is the best way to get some answers, because this is the official place to ask about it and developers responsible for it are frequently visiting it.
can’t wait!
when they announced it had an ETA around the end of the year (2014), obviously this didn’t happen but was curious if you had any insight on when do you think it will be released?
