Software > Houdini > Houdini News
Houdini Indie released
Aug 07, 2014 by CGP Staff
22
|
Side Effects Software has released a lower priced version of its flagship 3D software aimed at independent artists and studios. Houdini Indie is available at $199 per year and offers the same functionality of Houdini with the following restrictions: it cannot be used in the same pipeline as commercial versions of Houdini (uses its own file format for saving scenes and assets, along with FBX import and export), is restricted to 1920×1080 when rendering animations using Mantra and its commercial use is limited to studios
or artists that make less than $100K per year. An Indie version of Houdini Engine is also available at $99 per year. More on .
Source: MauricioPC
Looks like a great offer for freelancers/1 man shops $199 per year is pretty amazing.
Houdini is not easy to pick up i hear so i hope there’s a good selection of training videos out to support it.
Note that Houdini Indies has replaced Houdini Apprentice HD which was pulled as of today.
Maybe the jumpstart bundle from Adam Swaab is something for you (not free).
That is quite interesting. I guess SideFX is putting some pressure on its competitors.
SideFX says that Houdini Apprentice HD will be still available for free for students, so maybe students have to contact them to get it.
But this is pretty awesome, small studios like us can take great leverage from houdini, this is gonna be awesome, I’ll start my training as soon as I finish my current project.
Just downloaded the apprentice version to start learning.
Besides the modeling, Houdini is great in everything. Might just dump Max after I find a good modeler to be side by side. Not Modo please.
Blender + houdini can be a great combo
@ Mauricio,
yeah, i was believing this too, but forget it. After few commercial project with another software, you will inevitably come back to mama. 🙂
I wonder if it will play nicely with Houdini Engine. My problems with houdini have been the instability( crashes, virtually unusable on ATI cards); insanely slow performance especially when dealing with character animation (simple skinned mesh playback) + many other slow aspects. Many nodes like cookie do not really work properly! In addition mantra is also very slow for indie or personal use and there are not many third party renderers. This is why i wonder if HoudiniEngine-Indie are compatible?
As much as i love the underlying paradigm and infinite possibilities, i truly wish and wait for the day where Houdini can perform these day-to-day tasks on stable, excellent level. I would have no need for any other software(particularly adsk), i am sure of it. Right now it’s just very, very high end and specialist oriented and cannot painlessly fulfill some of the most essential needs that these very indies face. Still, great learning and portfolio value. Will grab at first chance
Should have read more thoroughly as my question was invalid – it’s great to hear about houdini engine-indie both being offered for such a good value! Tnx
Yesterday I decided to find some tutorials on destruction and try it out Houdini for the first time.
So I followed the tutorial and tried to push a little. No crash whatsoever and that was really impressive. Lets see as I delve more into it.
I bought it and have been struggling all day to get it to even work as it crashes on launch. Even entering license (hkey) crashes (something to do with menus/UI). I have decent gpu(titan), latest drivers and used apprentice successfully before! All i can say is this is depressing for whole day is lost (and probably a lot more). I am happy for whoever has painless experience, i somewhat had in past(1 crash per hour is norm?), but to anyone else concerned, seriously try the apprentice before!
I dont write here to dis anyone. I love sidefx, i want them to do well and this prompts me to write about these things publicly. You cannot pretend that everything is flawless, fast and stable – it is anything but! The packaging is “mainstream” however this “indie” audience does not have QUADROS while their site explicitly states “Workstation-class OpenGL graphics cards, such as NVidia Quadro and AMD Fire Pro, are required for professional use in production.”. It also states that it should work fine with non-pro gpus, however in the past I had problems with AMD 7970 pro(powerful OpenCL compute card) where i could not even make a viewport selection due to some OGL issues, things disappearing and rendering falsely. Obviously not their fault, it’s AMD but every other 3d software on market is rock stable and has worked around these issues! GPU issues are not the only thing ( i doubt my problems are gpu related right now ). If you package it for “indies” for 199$ while expect your software to only work in very CONTROLLED environments.. well something is not right here. I’ll sort my issue, I am sure it is my own stupidity, I hope i get some help from support. Meanwhile I am grateful of course to SIDEFX for this gesture, but i kindly suggest anyone to play around with apprentice before.
hey yuri,
it’s not common that houdini crashes. it can happen but the current version is stable crashes are very very rare. i can run houdini weeks long at 24h per day and no crash with simulation. when the release a new version then it’s buggy but after 1-2 months it’s stable thanks to the daily build concept.:-)
but whats important are the drivers and network. if you have download a new daily build it can happen that the houdini profile in the user directory makes a error. rename the folder and try again.
gpu driver don’t use beta drivers or when you have got old drivers update it.
Hello,
Thank you for feedback! I am very happy to hear these positive counter arguments and help offered! It took me 2 days and some rapid aging to sort this issue with navigation in menus causing a crash. Reason behind it – Wacoms wintab32.dll(faulty module: wintab32.dll or msvcr90.dll) – maybe this is useful for anyone if they encounter same problems like i did. Solution: Just erase wintab32.dll or update tablet driver*
I stand by my criteria. I truly wish success to SideFX and Houdini but i also think there are some things they need to iron out. I paid over 400euros for AMD 7970pro when it was flagship GPU(surely it would best driver support, right?), computationally 3.5Tflop+. It was not even able to select vertices in houdini viewport – you could not work with it! I had to pay even more to get Nvidia card. If you target it for “indie” or small studio i think GPU choice should not be as much of a problem as every other 3d software company has worked around it! Their site is very specific about requiring “pro” cards (quadros/fire*) though most Nvidia cards will work lovely. Ultimately i do wish Houdini the best possible market success, but i hope they can make it more mainstream! OGL issues are also one of the main cause for houdini crashes, every single forum(as well as support) will tell you to do (OPENGL_SOFTWARE*=1 – enable software rendering) – there is a reason for that due OpenGL stability issues! I hope this also answers your question @artist.
To my knowledge and experience Mantra is very mature and production proven, but it’s usually reserved for bigger shops with great render resource. I would argue it is quite a bit slower compared to Arnold(and vray in small shop scenarios). This is subjective.
///
Having sorted my issue out with crashing, i want to say LOUD and CLEAR that what SIDEFX is offering with Houdini INDIE and engine is nothing short of a CG REVOLUTION with their pricing model ( that is beyond generous)! The fact of the matter is that while big studios generally do not care about paying 5-10k (of software expense) per seat as main expenses go into paying salaries; for us small studios, indies or freelancers this price is very painful pill to swallow (especially considering ADSK ever lasting subscription for unknown updates). What SIDEFX did was brilliant as they do not sacrifice their main revenue but instead open this software to a whole new market! This, i believe, is something that EVERY major CG software company should follow( hint @THE FOUNDRY!).
This is not maya *lite* – this is FULLY FUNCTIONAL, INCREDIBLY POWERFUL software for indies, smaller studios, freelancers and people generally trying to get into it! Meanwhile I absolutely encourage anyone to support SideFX and give this a try because max/maya/c4d/blender/modo – they are all limited to a point where you will need some expensive plugins. Houdini with houdini engine and/or alembic will unshackle you and offer unlimited possibilities complimenting your parent DCC app(that you are comfortable with) for incredible price! I am deeply appreciative to them for this step and highly encourage anyone to give it a try!
Tnx!
nice to hear that you have found the problem. 🙂
the opengl problem is hard to solve the developer who develops the opengl viewport try’s his best to solve the gui problems. they have different machines in the company and they can’t test every possibility of setup. it’s written somewhere on the sidefx forum.
the main reason was sidefx had before this offer near to ZERO Indie customers. there main customers are big studios and midsize studios so for them they don’t loos money they just win in this case new customers. artist who want’s to learn houdini they have to invest quit some time till it makes BING and then you enjoy it to work with.
about mantra:
every render has pros and cons so in some shots render X is faster and in other shots render Y. it even can happen after some months that render Y is faster where before render X was. like renderman mantra is not a simple click render it takes time to understand the render.
what sidefx have done is a nice move not every company will do that or can do that so at the moment we will see whats the future brings. 🙂
please read the message from old school to learn how houdini internally works: http://forums.odforce.net/topic/17105-short-and-sweet-op-centric-lessons/
Really?
I heard that Houdini never crashes and a lot faster than Maya/Max.
I also heard that Mantra is better than VRay.
“I heard that Houdini never crashes and a lot faster than Maya/Max.”
houdini is stable with solid hardware and drivers. it can crash so the never is not true 🙂
“I also heard that Mantra is better than VRay.”
the are both in the same league of rendering quality. mantra is not a easy render but a mature one. vray is a wonderful rendering engine so don’t compare it.
as a side note mantra for using architectural or simple rendering doesn’t make much sens its more for complex rendering.
company that use mantra as main renderer:
mainroad russia (stalingrad vfx reel is a nice example)
Axis Animation (Fable Legends is a nice example)
gimpville norway
storm studio norway
You are right Eloi. But is hard to learn houdini and hard to learn blender and houdini
Great move by sidefx, I agree learning curve is quite steep, I would have to drop everything and focus solely on it.
I remember downloading the trial and trying to get through a few tutorials. The learning curve is pretty steep and killed all my interest. I rather the technology gets easier to get things done, but this is pretty much visual coding your custom tools to do what you want. I left the programming world for the art world, not sure if I want to go back.
Great solution for freelancers. I hope similar move from other companies. It just impossible to buy all applications and plugins for full price when you need them, sometimes just for 10 days in a year.
Another story is licenses for personal uses. Just for testing, learning and finding if it’s meet your expectation. I wish every software would have non commercial licenses.
In the case of Max, I wish all plugins had non commercial versions. How you are going to learn FX in Max if you need to spend more than $600 just for the basics plugins?
In that sense, Houdini is a god send, even if the software isn’t all that easy.
Good news for houdini community, i agree with deko is very good solution for freelancers.
Houdini crash of course! and sometimes crash a lot depends of your hardware.
and about houdini + blender…. i do not think so.
Only houdini is enough.