4 ms·

Houdini Engine for Unreal and Unity Now Free

85 points by doppp 6y ago

marcodiego 6y ago
As in beer?
- fctorial 6y ago
  As in candy.
lfowles 6y ago
Houdini is an exceptional tool! It took me a few tries to get through this press release... this only seems to change things for companies using the engine plugins that make >$100k.
- erichocean 6y ago
  Yes, though a major annoyance is that it's only the official SideFX plugins that are free, not Houdini Engine itself (the API). So you can't write your own specialized tools. I ran into this recently when we needed an interactive rendering technique that Houdini doesn't support. The Houdini Engine API would have been perfect, but we use Indie and it doesn't support anything but the official plugins. Instead, I'm writing HDK nodes in C++ that accomplish the same thing by copying to shared memory in a subprocess running Optix 7. It works, but it's ugly as hell. Oh well.
  - lfowles 6y ago
    Ugh. Maybe this was a move to simplify licensing, I hate having to dig around to see what features are gated especially if there are caveats like API access vs Official Plugins only.
gideon13 6y ago
Clearly a response to the new node editor in Blender 2.92 which threatens Houdini.
- lfowles 6y ago
  I doubt it. This is only for the engine integrations, not the core software.
- sho_hn 6y ago
  It's fun to watch from the sidelines how Blender, as an OSS product, is just plain winning. It'll drown out everything but specialized tools and/or products that are essentially just supply chain to particular large operations very soon (i.e. customers who need staff to interact with to do complex integration). It seems to be down to economies of scale - the business model of something like Maya, moving a small amount of "units" at high margins essentially, has been relatively easy to surpass in volume. Get the governance right, make sound technical decisions and ... you can't really compete with it without emulating it. I don't say this with any particular glee. This niche genre of proprietary software has always appealed to me as a confluence of some amazing complex problem-solving and UX innovation - I'm still so impressed by Modo, for example.
  - robenkleene 6y ago
    Does anyone care to comment why this is happening with Blender vs. Maya/Cinema 4D/Houdini, but it hasn't happened with The GIMP vs. Photoshop, or Ardour vs. Logic/Pro Tools/Ableton, or Godot vs. Unity/Unreal? It seems like overall the pattern is for the commercial options to be significantly more popular (and arguably more featureful) than the open source options. Why has Blender been able to reverse this pattern?
    - sho_hn 6y ago
      I think it's a lot of little things. - Blender came out of commercial, and the community was never really anti-commercial. Lots of classic FOSS communities have trouble identifying with paid development for example, worrying it will lead to a form of classicism in the community, etc. Blender, OTOH, tried to make sure there's core staff doing it fulltime basically from the get-go, I think. This makes a lot of stuff happen - taking care of not-fun things, having stable contact points, professionalism, doing good fundraising, etc. - Blender took dogfooding seriously, with their open movie projects - Blender took user research seriously, running events and inviting artists over and watching them use the software - Blender did good community management, with Blender Artists and other initiatives - In Blender's area integration, automation, tooling are all very complex, and they made some good key decisions, e.g. adopting Python for scripting just when Python was becoming the default programming language for non-programmers - Because the application domain Blender is in is so complex, training is important, and the competition probably underestimated making their products affordable for teaching institutions (call me out if wrong, I am not as confident on this point). Blender supported creation of training materials pretty well, too They simply got a lot of things right. Projects that paid attention (e.g. Krita) are also blossoming.
barbecue_sauce 6y ago
I wonder if this is in any way related to Blender's new node-focused workflow tools.
CobrastanJorji 6y ago
Is the Houdini Engine useful without having purchased a copy of Houdini?
klmadfejno 6y ago
Epic put a bunch of money into the company behind Houdini I believe. I'd wager that's the bigger reason for this happening. I don't feel I fully understand what Houdini can do for me.
didip 6y ago
What does this engine do?
- pzone 6y ago
  Houdini is a package for authoring procedural content generation tools. You can construct tools in Houdini like a building generator or level generator and no longer need to use up licenses to include them in your software at runtime.
wintorez 6y ago
I guess this is a "game changer"...

85 points by doppp 6y ago

marcodiego 6y ago

As in beer?

fctorial 6y ago
As in candy.

lfowles 6y ago

Houdini is an exceptional tool! It took me a few tries to get through this press release... this only seems to change things for companies using the engine plugins that make >$100k.

erichocean 6y ago
Yes, though a major annoyance is that it's only the official SideFX plugins that are free, not Houdini Engine itself (the API). So you can't write your own specialized tools. I ran into this recently when we needed an interactive rendering technique that Houdini doesn't support. The Houdini Engine API would have been perfect, but we use Indie and it doesn't support anything but the official plugins. Instead, I'm writing HDK nodes in C++ that accomplish the same thing by copying to shared memory in a subprocess running Optix 7. It works, but it's ugly as hell. Oh well.
- lfowles 6y ago
  Ugh. Maybe this was a move to simplify licensing, I hate having to dig around to see what features are gated especially if there are caveats like API access vs Official Plugins only.

gideon13 6y ago

Clearly a response to the new node editor in Blender 2.92 which threatens Houdini.

lfowles 6y ago
I doubt it. This is only for the engine integrations, not the core software.
sho_hn 6y ago
It's fun to watch from the sidelines how Blender, as an OSS product, is just plain winning. It'll drown out everything but specialized tools and/or products that are essentially just supply chain to particular large operations very soon (i.e. customers who need staff to interact with to do complex integration). It seems to be down to economies of scale - the business model of something like Maya, moving a small amount of "units" at high margins essentially, has been relatively easy to surpass in volume. Get the governance right, make sound technical decisions and ... you can't really compete with it without emulating it. I don't say this with any particular glee. This niche genre of proprietary software has always appealed to me as a confluence of some amazing complex problem-solving and UX innovation - I'm still so impressed by Modo, for example.
- robenkleene 6y ago
  Does anyone care to comment why this is happening with Blender vs. Maya/Cinema 4D/Houdini, but it hasn't happened with The GIMP vs. Photoshop, or Ardour vs. Logic/Pro Tools/Ableton, or Godot vs. Unity/Unreal? It seems like overall the pattern is for the commercial options to be significantly more popular (and arguably more featureful) than the open source options. Why has Blender been able to reverse this pattern?
  - sho_hn 6y ago
    I think it's a lot of little things. - Blender came out of commercial, and the community was never really anti-commercial. Lots of classic FOSS communities have trouble identifying with paid development for example, worrying it will lead to a form of classicism in the community, etc. Blender, OTOH, tried to make sure there's core staff doing it fulltime basically from the get-go, I think. This makes a lot of stuff happen - taking care of not-fun things, having stable contact points, professionalism, doing good fundraising, etc. - Blender took dogfooding seriously, with their open movie projects - Blender took user research seriously, running events and inviting artists over and watching them use the software - Blender did good community management, with Blender Artists and other initiatives - In Blender's area integration, automation, tooling are all very complex, and they made some good key decisions, e.g. adopting Python for scripting just when Python was becoming the default programming language for non-programmers - Because the application domain Blender is in is so complex, training is important, and the competition probably underestimated making their products affordable for teaching institutions (call me out if wrong, I am not as confident on this point). Blender supported creation of training materials pretty well, too They simply got a lot of things right. Projects that paid attention (e.g. Krita) are also blossoming.

barbecue_sauce 6y ago

I wonder if this is in any way related to Blender's new node-focused workflow tools.

CobrastanJorji 6y ago

Is the Houdini Engine useful without having purchased a copy of Houdini?

klmadfejno 6y ago

Epic put a bunch of money into the company behind Houdini I believe. I'd wager that's the bigger reason for this happening. I don't feel I fully understand what Houdini can do for me.

didip 6y ago

What does this engine do?

pzone 6y ago
Houdini is a package for authoring procedural content generation tools. You can construct tools in Houdini like a building generator or level generator and no longer need to use up licenses to include them in your software at runtime.

wintorez 6y ago

I guess this is a "game changer"...