Houdini Indie

Houdini Indie
N/A
Metacritic
92
Steam
73.361
xDR
Our rating is calculated based on the reviews and popularity of the game.
Price
$269.99
Release date
10 October 2018
Developers
Publishers
Steam reviews score
Total
92 (179 votes)

Houdini Indie's procedural node-based workflow offers a smarter way to create high quality game art. Houdini technology is used by AAA studios to take their games to the next level and now this procedural power is also available to indie game devs around the world.

Show detailed description

Houdini Indie system requirements

Minimum:

  • Requires a 64-bit processor and operating system
  • OS: Windows 10 (64 bit) Windows 8.1 Windows 8 Windows 7 SP1 (future versions of Houdini will not be supported on Win7) Windows Server (any version) is NOT supported.
  • Processor: Intel or AMD x64 CPU with SSE 4.2 required. Houdini 17.0 will not run on a system with an instruction set lower than SSE 4.1.
  • Memory: 4 GB RAM
  • Graphics: A GL4.0 compliant graphics card is required. GL3.3 cards will have missing features and lower GL versions will not run Houdini 17 at all. 4GB VRAM or more is required. Less than this can result in display errors such as blank windows. High DPI displays (4K, 5K) or multiple monitors require a minimum of 4GB. Graphics card must support OpenCL version 1.2. The OptiX Denoiser requires a Kepler or later Nvidia GPU (K, P, M, V prefixes). - NVidia GeForce GPUs: 390.77 or higher (don't use 376.xx - you'll have slow performance and crashes) - NVidia Quadro GPUs: 390.77 or higher (don't use 376.xx - you'll have slow performance and crashes) - AMD: 17.Q3 or higher - Intel 10.18.10.3958 or higher.
  • DirectX: Version 9.0c
  • Storage: 2 GB available space
  • Additional Notes: 3 Button mouse required. Scroll wheel used where present. Tablet recommended for Houdini's brush-based tools.
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[UA] trijmeister
[UA] trijmeister

Houdini Indie: A Powerful Tool for Creatives and Artists 🎨

A Game-Changer for VFX and Simulation 💥

Houdini Indie is a powerful and versatile 3D software package that is revolutionizing the VFX and simulation industries. It offers a wide range of tools and features that allow artists to create stunning visuals and realistic simulations.

Unleash Your Creativity ✨

Houdini Indie provides artists with the tools they need to bring their creative visions to life. It features a node-based workflow that makes it easy to create complex effects and simulations.

Simulate Anything 🧪

Houdini Indie's powerful simulation engine allows artists to simulate a wide range of phenomena, including fire, smoke, water, cloth, and rigid bodies.

VFX Production at Your Fingertips 🎬

Houdini Indie is a complete VFX production toolset. It includes tools for modeling, rigging, animation, and rendering.

Learn from Houdini Masters 🎓

Houdini Indie has a thriving online community of users and a wealth of learning resources.

Overall Impression: A VFX and Simulation Powerhouse 🏆

Houdini Indie is a remarkable piece of software that is empowering artists and creators around the world. It is a must-have tool for anyone who wants to create stunning visuals and realistic simulations.

Pros:

Powerful and versatile 3D software package
Wide range of tools and features for VFX and simulation
Node-based workflow for easy creation
Powerful simulation engine
Complete VFX production toolset
Thriving online community and learning resources

Cons:

Steep learning curve for beginners
Can be resource-intensive

Moon Walker
Moon Walker

Houdini is a procedural node-based 3D design and animation software with limitless features that you can create anything you can imagine. It's so strong that you can create realistic particle, fluid and pyro simulations with high details for film and game VFX. You can also create procedural game models, props and environments. It's the most versatile 3D software. Once you learn it you would never go back.

dorel.didel.23
dorel.didel.23

disclaimer: this review is for steam version, or more about steam

having said that... worst experience ever:
- first, it updates without asking to a major version and breaks some projects that i am working on due to a bug in houdini engine.
- looses all preferences due to the update because why not
- i set steam to only update houdini when i launch it so that i don't repeat the same experience and guess what: when i do want it to update (because the above mentioned bug got fixed) it doesn't update, even after i set it to automatically update.
- also, you have to manually download sidefx labs tools with this version of houdini

long story short... never buy programs off steam!

Grudge
Grudge

After the currency change for Turkey, Houdini has returned to default price for Houdini indie. which is 5x more than what it used to be. With all the troubles with the Cloud, Houdini engine, not being able to use even Sidefx labs with version 20 (still using 19.5), and other third party plug-ins, there's no reason to use it on steam anymore. Will not subscribe again from here in a few months, if the price doesn't change at least...

DaveBot
DaveBot

Pretty handy for quick iterations on meshes, which is great for VFX with mesh particles in Unreal. Bulk export with only a little bit of preparation is invaluable. Only downside is that Blender is also really good AND free - and for a lot of cases with simple meshes, I could probably do it faster in Blender. I can definitely see a use for both softwares though and have just started learning Houdini, so a lot of my bias is 100% from lack of knowledge and routine.

If you're on a tiny budget and you're ONLY doing realtime VFX in Unity or Unreal, it might not be worth the Indie license, unless you also want to explore other aspects of the software. But so far I am happy with it and the determining factor of whether I'll keep using it or not, probably comes down to how quickly Blender eats into the same features.

Meme Team 6
Meme Team 6

Amazing software. Other than the environment file needing some tweaking for Redshift and labs, it's been smooth sailing with the steam version. (look around in your user documents if you're hunting for that .env)
I had to roll back to a previous build, it was only few clicks away under the betas tab and it auto updates for you pretty quickly.
If you've never tried Houdini, get apprentice for free and dip your toes into some DOPs, SOPs & VOPs, the world's your oyster.

OlaHaldor
OlaHaldor

Hands down the most powerful tool for procedural modeling tasks.
I've barely scratched a microscopic part of the surface, and I'm hooked.

For the few, small things I've got to use it for (flowmaps and road/terrain tools) it's been nothing but fantastic.

The learning slope is steep. Even with tutorials I struggle from time to time because nodes and functions change location, name or go obsolete from time to time. Wish there was more current tutorials, but I also understand it's a huge undertaking to keep up to date with all sorts of changes.

b3
b3

I prefer the steam version of Houdini as it allows me to float licenses between my two workstations. Extremely robust VFX software with fully procedural tools from modeling to simulations, and it's very easy to create your own custom parameters. Even better when seamlessly integrated with Redshift for production quality GPU-accelerated renders. You can change Houdini versions in the properties under the Beta settings.

isobko
isobko

Hello! I am a technical artist, this program is the best option for integrating procedural things into the game engine
10/10 rating on the scale of the gaming industry)))
It's a pity there is no support for LINUX ((((

QuantumBlue
QuantumBlue

pricy buttt good to try and if you want to do in future

haddad.rec
haddad.rec

Never buy it from Steam ! it automaticly update your software and you cant choose exactly which version you want to use (even if you go to the Beta menu, you cant select All version) so its a mess when you have 3rs party plugin running on specific version. NEVER NEVER NEVER BUY IT FROM STEAM>

pigeondelta3
pigeondelta3

Houdini is been awsome to use. I have to say that the learning curve can for some people a bit harder compare to other software. But once you start to know the software you will feel the procedural power at your finger tips.
You can automatize a lot of task, make parts my work less repetitive.

Having the plugin for game engines is something with a lot of potential. Where you can make tools that automaticly placing models for you based on the rules you made.

Conclussion
It is worth it, give it a try. :)

Golden Arms
Golden Arms

Houdini 17 is one of the most powerful 3D software packages on the planet.

nuki
nuki

Houdini is a remarkable piece of software. I've tried many different 3d-packages over the years, but this one stands out due to the procedural paradigm it imposes. That isnt entirely unseen amongst its competitors, but carried out in a very clean and uncompromising fashion. Hence it excels in generating flexible and reusable content while appearing a bit clunky for traditional modeling and character animation in comparison. The toolset is there, but in those particular areas the procedural approach can be constraining if not required. Since the I/O is very thorough you are not bound to use Houdini for these tasks though.

Now the question is if you should invest time to adopt Houdini. I dont believe that its learning curve is extraordinarily steep, the program is just very deep and can feel overwhelming because of that. Other applications try to appeal more accessible by hiding options from the user which may help initially but eventually hurts usability.

Thanks to the large amount of free learning material provided for Houdini by SideFX and a very helpful community I would argue that getting into it will be no harder than with any other 3d software. And thanks to a very active developer that provides daily updates and constanty implements new features theres alway something fresh to check out. They even offer a free 'Apprentice' version so you can get familiar with the program.

The Indie license you can purchase on Steam is mildly limited in terms of render resolution (max 4096²) and uses its own file format (.hiplc). Also theres some business related restrictions which you can read about here. In my opinion the generous pricing plus the benefits of the license being locked to a Steam account instead of a node dramatically outweigh those minor constraints.

If there was a 'Best Software' Award on Steam, I would have nominated Houdini Indie. Valve, pls fix.

null
null

Houdini is a great program, very fast to render.

Krampus
Krampus

It could be better described as a development environment with every single little piece of art you make being able to be used, adapted and polished from project to project.

Is there a learning curve? Yes. god yes. You will cry and scream and get frustrated and probably give up .

Or you push through and become an actual effing Wizard .

Radical Werewolf
Radical Werewolf

It's Houdini...the best 3D package..on Steam. It's perfect!

Steam version has the added ability of easily floating the license to all your PCs with the Steam client.

mentalguitar
mentalguitar

I cannot open two instances of Houdini at once which is complete nonsense. Now I cannot even open Houdini at all and am loosing income everyday because of it. I wish I had just bought from SideFX.

Chop Huey
Chop Huey

Top notch software for 3D generalists, also incorporates an easy workflow between other softwares.
Steep learning curve, but once you figured it out the 3D-world is yours!

Alvignolo
Alvignolo

This is an incredible piece of software, that really allows the CGI industry to move forward.

Rumple4Skin
Rumple4Skin

great software incredible power, would prefer the option to update instead of the forced updating. will probably just buy straight from sidefx next time.

Bolinho
Bolinho

BEST PIECE OF SOFTWARE I HAD EVER USED! INCRIDIBLE AMAZING, IT CHANGED MY LIFE

errata
errata

Every other 3D modelling tool is for little babies.

3Ddeath
3Ddeath

Great program and lots of fun to use, I've used many 3D applications in a long career in 3D and this one feels very robust and well built that scales well with complexity.

It's not a simple program, with it being sold on steam might give people that illusion, you have to be clever to use it and commit a lot of time to learning it, however its worth it, everything you do in it makes sense, its built very intelligently and if you understand 3d and follow logic it gets you pretty far.

Jhett
Jhett

best software for simulations ive used

bomberman
bomberman

Hard to get into but if you stick with you'll get rewarded 100 times over. I've been using this software for 2 months now (as of writing this review) and I'm already able to do some stuff I've wanted to do for a long time in other software (Cinema 4D mainly), but couldn't.

After you understand how stuff works you start to get a feeling that you can REALLY create anything without limits. If you're serious about effects and animation, this is definitely the software to use!

evanrude43
evanrude43

Easily the best program for creating fx/procedural content. Don't really need to go into detail, if you are looking at houdini on steam you already know how good it is.

JuliankowyStwor
JuliankowyStwor

It's like Factorio, but for artists ಠ⌣ಠ

OnePunchDrunk
OnePunchDrunk

My kids saw this on steam and now it's a family competition to see who can be the most creative. Did not know it would charge me the full yearly subscription all at once but oh well, lets see if they (kids) can stay interested, they got a full year to impress me! Lol

twelveplusplus
twelveplusplus

Houdini is the most powerful software available for creating game art and visual FX.

It is easy to create terrains, or cities, and populate them with props which can all be instantiated as game objects and controlled from within your game engine editor (not at runtime) or from other 3D software like maya or max using Houdini Engine. You can even have up to 3 indie licenses of Houdini Engine for free (so one person can make tools, but 3 other people can be using them to create your game, animation, or VFX).

Houdini has lesser known, but amazing procedural and keyframe character animation tools which are fun to work with and produce highest quality results which are easy to iterate upon. These are complimented by the exquisite Vellum hair and cloth tools. Do yourself a favor and just dive in and start animating your characters!

Houdini is well known for visual effects, including destruction (varonoi fracturing), fire, smoke, ocean, particle fluids, dynamics, particle sims, and L-systems (plant growth).

Houdini is also well known for procedural modeling. For instance, instead of just creating a single building, you can create a style of a building, and houdini will create infinite variations on that style (all based on the parameters you specify). The same thing goes for trees, rocks, roads, rivers, bridges, fences, etc. Then it is easy to change the style or to increase the quality without having to redo an entire scene. Similarly, it is easy to redo an entire scene in a matter of moments. All of this stuff can be instanced in your game engine, so that it is efficient for games.

There are a plethora of specialized tools for games and more that are constantly being updated. Make sure to install the "SideFX labs" shelf tools.

Houdini includes a powerful CPU renderer, and it can be used with other GPU renderers. It also has a compositer, which can be very useful for many things (like quickly baking and iterating on texture maps).

although, if you are doing film/teevee/animation you will probably want to work with an external compositer such as the one included with Blackmagic Davinci Resolve (

dkimber
dkimber

The future of game development, will be as impactful as Zbrush was to 3D modeling.

KINGAWESOME
KINGAWESOME

Best Programm for FX. And if you like to code, you will love this and his various options. Just the Docs could be sometimes a little bit better. But maybe its just my missing comprehension.

Foamfollower
Foamfollower

Compared to other software I've used, the advantage to using Houdini is pure open ended freedom.

With research, and patience, there is very little you really can't do.

opticfibre
opticfibre

Super powerful, a must for any serious gamedev.

Maelstrom
Maelstrom

Best 3D software for FX out there... and getting better with each new version!

Om
Om

As others have said, Houdini is a remarkable piece of software.

This remarkable nature comes from embracing simple ideas consistently throughout the product: namely, allowing uniform node structures to flexibly build the content you want.

What is a separate plugin in other DCCs is a often a shelf tool or a handful of nodes and some VEX code in Houdini.

mischa.schaub
mischa.schaub

SIMPLY THE BEST TOOL FOR CREATION
-for your brain
-for the arts
-for fun and expression

siftycat
siftycat

Are you like me? Is what you're doing what I'm doing? If it is, then you'll like Houdini.

I'm a programmer and artist and indie developer - probably the closest job description you might get is a technical artist, but obviously right now I'm doing nearly everything. I use Unreal, and I used to use Maya and Blender in a pipeline with ZBrush, Substance and some of the Corel suite programs.

Imagine, if you will, that in your modelling program not only do you have regular undo, but you also have a massive undo list that you can dip into and change too. That you can go back into any stage of the process and change it. That you no longer have to intimately plan and execute certain sections of the process, because the flow isn't A to Z, but A to Z and back to whatever letters you want as many times as you want, skipping back to Z to see your changes. Because that's what the node system is. This principle should be the starting point of how you see working with Houdini. It's no longer what you have in front of you. It's no longer managing a cascade of change files. It's being able to see what's in front of you at any stage of the process and seeing what the changes you make affect at any other stage.

The problem with Maya was always that despite its great Unreal integration (LiveLink, etc), working in Maya was always a lot of hard work. And when I say hard work, I mean there's always a lot of repetitive work that needs to be done with assets, and MASH sucks. And the problem with Blender is that actually fitting it into the pipeline is a lot of work. Blender is fantastic, don't get me wrong, and the fact that it's both kinds of free is incredible, and I still fully support its mission. But Blender is a significant amount of work for a small team. I salute and admire those people who do that work. And I still use Blender - but it's just not part of my pipeline now.

But Houdini, from the perspective of a programmer and artist, is incredible. Those other tools I might have open when I needed them, but I find a reason to open Houdini almost every day. Normally, using something new is a drag. And Houdini comes with a steep learning curve, true, but once you get into the rhythm of it, the interaction between visual scripting with nodes and using VEX or Python will just come naturally. Last week, when I started working on characters again, after largely using Houdini for hard modelling and Unreal integration, another dimension opened for me with ZBrush - that I can finally model organically, work with procedurals in Houdini, and then pass it back to ZBrush. And honestly, that feeling of just having the workflow open up before your eyes and reveal a new way of doing something? That's 90% of what working with Houdini is like.

Houdini might not be for you. If you're not comfortable with programming, you might find the learning curve very steep - but you don't have to step outside of the incredible number of nodes and functions that Houdini comes with to get good results. Like anything - like Maya and Blender - you'll get much more out of it if you do write your own scripts and nodes, but you're never going to be limited if you just use them. Not only because the functions it comes with are so numerous, not only because you can change provided nodes and assets using the node based system anyway, but also because there's a huge library of assets for Houdini out there that other people are writing.

Houdini is the best thing to happen to me since ZBrush. And that's huge for me. Are there niggles? Sure. Sculpting is a bit "meh", but it's not a deal breaker (did I mention I use ZBrush?). You're probably going to need to pay careful attention if you're importing and exporting animations to Unreal, because the FBX stuff is a bit screwy in that respect. And you're definitely going to need Visual Studio Code (with VEX plugin) and the Houdini Expression Editor plugin if you intend to do any serious VEX or Python work, because the internal editor is poor at best, and out of the box editing in an external editor prevents you from working in Houdini until you've saved and closed the file.

But the things I'd like to see changes aren't like the thing I'd like to see changed in, say, Maya or Modo. At this point Houdini hasn't randomly erased my preferences with a bug that's been going on for years (Maya). And it doesn't crash when I hit ctrl-Z too quickly (Modo). And I don't have to keep writing and changing stuff to keep it working in the pipeline (sorry Blender :( ).

If you're an Indie developer, this might be the best thing you've ever bought. If you're baulking at the idea of a subscription, don't - you'll get all your mileage out of this and more in the first year alone. It's saving me so much time and money. And at the moment, support on Steam is incredible (thanks Ben!) and SideFX are just value adding on and off Steam.

Get it. Do it. Now. DO IT.

๖ۣۜCraze
๖ۣۜCraze

Extremely powerful, flexible tool for film and game development alike.

Sentientv2
Sentientv2

Speaking to my own experience, Houdini is an incredible tool for creation of 3D assets for games. Not only that, but it can generate a lot of varied output given a little input. Houdini can be used for much more than games, but this is the experience that I can directly speak to.

What is Houdini? (Quick Summary)

Houdini is 3D procedural software that enables the creation of models, rigs, animations, and more. It uses a node graph layout to generate an output. The parameters on nodes can be set to take input or vary based on values like frame or time or full expressions. With this variety, artists are able to generate many outputs from a single graph. For example, you can setup a graph that makes a stylized rock. Tying certain parameters throughout the graph to things like the current frame of the timeline allow you to do something like run the timeline and each frame a different variation of your rock graph is produced.

One of the most fundamental aspects to understand about Houdini is that the workflow is non-destructive. If you have used Adobe Substance Designer, then know that it is much the same concept of design. Non-Destructive means that if you made a graph to create a rock, but you eventually decide you don't like the way a certain node affected the end-result, you simply change or remove the node from the graph. When you do that, everything that resulted after that node is updated to reflect your changes. An example of a destructive workflow is Photoshop, where you are bound to your history and how much you can undo. When you want to make a change you made 10 actions ago, you must also abandon all of the actions between your current state and the action you wish to change. With a tool like Houdini, if you get a request from a producer or art director to change an aspect an asset's design, it isn't the huge undertaking that requires you to forfeit hours of work.

How It's Used in Games

Houdini is used in studios big and small to supplement the game development process. Control by Remedy Games used it to create damage models and visual effects. Studios like Ubisoft used it to help with their level design and world creation process in FarCry 5. They could paint out areas for things like roads, buildings, plant coverage, etc. in their level editor and send that data into Houdini. Houdini would run simulations against all of these parameters and return resulting geometry. They even used it to simulate coverage of plants, accounting for things like tree canopy and competition of species within an area. There are videos available from both of these teams sharing how they used Houdini and I urge you to check them out.

Houdini Indie and Houdini Engine

With Houdini Indie, you get the ability to access most all of the full version of Houdini's features (the full version can run thousands of dollars a year). With Houdini Indie though, you get included access to Houdini Engine, which is a bridge between the Houdini application and a game engine. Houdini Engine leverages Houdini Digital Assets (HDAs) to expose parameters to be tweaked and input to be specified in a game engine asset. These values are sent to Houdini and Houdini runs the asset's graph with the configured parameters and sends back the result. So in Unreal, I could make a spline and hook it up to an HDA that creates a fence and it will create a fence according to the properties of the spline curve.

SideFX has some great resources they posted recently called the Game Jam Starter Kit that show what these look like in practice in both Unity and Unreal.

Personal Opinion on Procedural Workflow

I feel that this process of procedural design of assets is at least one of the major paths for game art pipelines moving forward. With a tool like Houdini, one can setup asset creation to meet the requirements of current platforms and be ready to scale to support the needs of tomorrow's platforms.

If you're interested in procedural content creation, technical art, and/or building effective art pipelines, you owe it to yourself to try out Houdini and research more about how it's currently being used in studios. It's going to become more widely used to help small teams create projects with scope previously beyond their reach.

adi1961
adi1961

The KING of all 3D Application!

Once you go procedural...you don't want go back doing all those tedious 3D labor, even just a simple script it will get you far and more efficient :)
This software has a steep learning curve but once you get a hang of it you will reap the benefit

d4rkm4vis
d4rkm4vis

Houdini is amazing. It's great for both work and hobby projects. It's also a lot of fun to use and that makes it easy to learn. If you're a developer, this is 3D modeling tailor made for you. Definitely a must have tool.

reviewarchitecture
reviewarchitecture

Houdini let´s itself be customized to fit my workflow. It has a powerful set of tools which incite me to learn more on how to use them in the field of architecture. It maybe challenging sometimes, but undoubtly worthwhile.

Anonymous
Anonymous

don't get this on steam, I made a terrible mistake

Jahir
Jahir

I would definitely recommend this software to anyone who wants to learn a lot of cool stuff to do, not only in vfx but also 3d in general.But keep in mind,you need to dedicate some time to learn the core fundamentals and how it works,once you understand them your brain just does the connection and you will soon have infinite choices and methods to do whatever you want!
Really powerful software and SideFX is introducing lot of cool stuff in major updates and a lot of bug fixes in daily builds!

michael664
michael664

As someone coming from using Autodesk Maya for so long at the start it was a bit of a learning curve. However considering how powerful the software is it has been well worth learning for both modelling and also creating assets

Skareeg
Skareeg

Steep curve is steep. Would steep again.

Captain Wigglesworth
Captain Wigglesworth

This is the ultimate sandbox. It's also the most complex and capable software package I've ever used.

You will need:
- Much patience
- Much determination
- Much coffee

But it will be worth it if you hang in there long enough to become proficient.

Nekronavt
Nekronavt

The best game I ever played. Totally worth it. Dark Souls of CG world.

Dorintin
Dorintin

6 donuts out of 6. only ever crashes when it's important.

Brian
Brian

Gameplay is terrible but the graphics are great

DannyArt
DannyArt

Houdini, what can we say? Its one amazing piece of software that works amazing with UE4. Really a program that needs a build in UE solution or maybe a small toolset designed specifically for these engines. But, its working as I hoped for! Can't wait to procedurally make environments and tools to be placed in environments later on... oh and fluid sims!

fibla1
fibla1

You can do literally anything on Houdini, but the learning curve is steep.
As someone said in their review, the Dark Souls of the 3d softwares.

empathogen
empathogen

Houdini has a bit of a steep learning curve, but once you get past that, you realize just how few limits this software has. As cliche as it sounds, you really can create just about anything you can imagine. Maya might still be a bit easier/better for creating and animating characters, but for anything else, Houdini is the most powerful tool out there! Check YouTube for tons of tutorials to get more comfortable with Houdini... Entagma make some of the best, imo. Happy creating!

morevandrew
morevandrew

The thing i love the most about Houdini is it never wrongs you. If something doesn't work as it's supposed to, it's only ever because of your own dumb ass.

Houdini is the best artistic tool out there, prove me wrong. (it's 2021 now, may be later Blender catches up)
I don't see a problem with getting it through Steam. You can open several instances via straight executor link and roll back updates through "betas"

Money and time well spent.

JimTheGhost
JimTheGhost

This made my workflow much faster and unlocked a world of possibilities for all the games I develop

nerdaction
nerdaction

In the hands of a technically inclined artist, one can do the work of many. This software could be the secret of AA teams creating AAA quality. Go check out some of the tutelage videos from Simon/SideFX Labs and you will see what I'm talking about.

Rissole
Rissole

Incredibly rewarding once you put a couple of hours in to understand the basics, highly recommend the 'hipflask' beginner course which is free. I enjoy playing with the procedural generation and trying to visualise math concepts so that I can better understand them. Downside to Steam version is that the updates tend to lag a little behind the direct release, but it is much easier to run on 2 computers this way (alternating laptop/desktop). Give the free 'apprentice' version a go to see if it's for you :)

daedpul
daedpul

You probably know why you are here.

Only thing is that auto save isn't on by default. Create a text file, name it 123.py and paste

import hou
hou.appendSessionModuleSource('''hou.hscript("autosave on")''')

in the file. Put it in your Documents>houdini18.x>scripts folder and there you go. I've never lost more than 2 minutes of work.

xikones
xikones

Amazing software. Stiff learning curve but it pays off eventually.

HeliusFlame
HeliusFlame

Thought I can do VFX without it.. bought other software.. still have to use it all the time because of limitations of the other programs.. all together, the more you use it, the more you need it.. paradox ;)

KngroVo
KngroVo

An industry standard software. Hard to learn but it is worth it if you want to become a serious vfx artist.

Astryx
Astryx

Update: My original review is below, but this is specifically for the Steam version. Do. Not. Get. The. Steam version. The way in which steam handles updates and pipeline needs are absolutely incompatible. I find myself constantly going into properties to try to force it to stay on a specific version to keep from breaking compatibility with crucial plugins. Additionally, it is far less stable than the non-steam version.

I switched to Houdini over 2 years ago. I primarily used Maya and Cinema 4D before that. It definitely took some time to get used to the node interface and having scripting with VEX built into every single operation. For regular modeling and retopology it's really only a little slower than Maya ever was for me now though. In fact, I find it's actually a lot faster once I account for weird little Maya bugs and the fact that so much of it can be made procedural.

Getting used to exporting to substance painter took some time since the meshes ton't work quite the same way and I had to use UDIM tiles. I also find it easy to get side tracked trying to make everything procedural. It took some conscious effort to say "no, I'm just going to model this part normally" and sprinkle in procedural things as needed for easier changes once the model is complete. I find overall it's still faster for me since I don't spend nearly as much time revising things once the model is near complete.

As for character animation, I don't do that a lot but I do think Maya is probably setup better for it. As for simulation though, there's no comparison. Houdini does a lot more.

I do still use Cinema 4D some but mainly because when Maxon bought Redshift it became cheaper for me to just build in Houdini and take it over to Cinema 4D rather than use the Redshift plugin. Still though, as I do more stuff in real-time engines, Redshift is less and less necessary. If I had to pick just one, I'd go with Houdini over Cinema 4D.

corvidstudios
corvidstudios

Houdini is great but do not get houdini on steam, you have to ask them to upload a certain version of houdini if you don't want it updating mid-production. They also just removed the beta we were using and now we can't open any houdini scene until they restore the version we were using.

Team_Spahr
Team_Spahr

I like buying Houdini on steam because I use multiple computers and moving the license around it extremely easy with steam DRM.

Other than that, its Houdini, if you already know of the program, what more can I add. If you don't know much about it, it's just the leading software to generate VFX and other dynamic effects like destruction. I use it mostly as a 3d modeler. Utilizing the non destructive node based workflow to streamline lots of my modeling and world building processes. Similar to what Substance Designer is to texturing, I use Houdini for modeling.

BOT Bret
BOT Bret

I liked simulating colorful wet and juicy stuff

ahuy94
ahuy94

Feels like a magician playing this

manu3d
manu3d

Great software, steep learning curve, worth it.

Smilex CZ
Smilex CZ

Better than paying a monthly subscription to Autodesk :)

zhai
zhai

the learning curve is like Omaha beach in WW2

Pinds
Pinds

10/10. Harder than dark souls. I'm almost finishing the tutorial.

Grungykidd
Grungykidd

Good place to get Houdini Indie if you want an easy way to manage your license when switching computer to computer and you are PC based. I would avoid getting this version if you are mac based though. I ran into a few issues when using some heightfield nodes (specifically HF Erode), to the point I couldn't work with them. In Windows it's fine though. Switched over to the version on SideFx's site and those bugs are gone.

MVPeanaught
MVPeanaught

500 hours and haven't beaten the first boss

Speliy Frukt
Speliy Frukt

Houdini is a great piece of software. BUT don't even think to buy STEAM version! Unstoppable forced updates in the middle of the project is hell. Your external render for sure will stop works. Also there is a big issue with macos there is just nonworking openGL nodes in steam version (work good at sidefx version on same macbook). SideFX support suggest to cancel subscription on Steam, steam support its to late to cancel. So for me it was just a waste of money.