(Updated) Side Effects’ Robert Magee has stated that it will be possible for Houdini Engine assets to interact with host applications. Read his comment at the end of this post for more.
(Updated) Thanks to your comments Side Effects has taken notice of the great demand there is for a Houdini Engine for Max integration plugin. They have now opened a poll to see which Houdini Engine integration plugins are the most requested ones. Please head over to Side Effects’ site and cast your votes. You can find their message and link at the end of this post.
(Updated) Side Effects’ Robert Magee has let us know that the company would like to measure how much interest there is in a Houdini Engine for 3DS Max integration plugin. Would you be interested in seeing such a development? Please leave your comments at the end of this post.
Side Effects announced Houdini Engine, a compact API that extracts Houdini’s core technologies into a procedural engine which allows for integration of Houdini technology into 3D applications.
Studios can now load Houdini Digital Assets into their go-to applications and build a more integrated procedural pipeline that does not rely on baked-out data. Experimental plugins for major 3D apps such as Maya and the Unity game engine are under development.
The Houdini Engine API is available today for studios looking to bring Houdini into their pipeline or third party companies looking to incorporate Houdini technology into their existing applications. According to Side Effects’ Kim Davidson, they have “turned Houdini into the world’s most powerful plug-in for any number of DCC apps”. Watch a video on Vimeo and find out more on .
yep would love this for max hope others do-
Yeah after watching this demo I seriously think the greatest plug in for Max would be this, and that’s saying a lot, with Max’s history of plugins.
i think that is a fantastic idea!
This would be very cool 😀
Sounds awesome to me! 🙂
Yes, I would definitely love to see this integration for max! ^_^
Yes, Yes, Yes please! 😉
WOW! That would be very very very cool! Please do it for max!
We would really like to integrate Houdini in some way but never really had the need before but this would change the whole game! 🙂
Would be very awesome to have.
It would be great. Especially the way you can make tornadoes in Houdini and procedural lightning. Not to mention Ocean surfaces.
IT would be perfect. Please do
As a user of Max since DOS R3: It would be fantastic
Max is my utility knife, I use it for FX, Icons, Character Animation, Titles – This would be a great addition
Brilliant!
Smart move 😉
Iam waiting…..
YES please! 3dsmax is my go to tool kit.
Yes. Of course.
To be fair, this doesn’t give you Houdini inside of Max, it gives you the ability to use assemblies that expose very limited parameters, then load the results back in (from disk?) as a geometry cache.
Like I didn’t see any examples of sampling, all the inputs were in a control panel.
Seems closer to those videos where ADSK was showing “ICE inside 3ds max” but all they were doing was some cache interchange between XSI and Max to push their bundles.
And really, even if this plugin was free, you’d only be able to use it with Houdini, which is going to be $4500 + $2500/yr.
Now the API does look interesting. No idea what the pricing on that would be, but maybe then you COULD implement something more like Houdini inside of 3ds max, but it might be very complex to make something like that. So lets say Engine (the API) costs $5000 per seat, and the integration plugin done by a 3rd party costs $1500? Still a stretch.
This would be very interesting. I’ve used Houdini output in a Max pipeline before; on “Alice In Wonderland” we used it for procedural objects (shrubberies!) with vertex coloring, and water splashes for the Red Queen’s moat sequence. We used fbx to move data back and forth which wasn’t the best – this would be a lot more convenient for sure!
Can’t wait for that to happen.
Interest is
big.
Great! powerful addition.
Totally would support a Max version of this
Currently creating&developing in Max and Unity this would surely bring some great flexibility onto the table
I vote – YES ! Do a Max version !
Count me interested.
Would love it.
Yes please!
Yesssss. That’s what we want for 3ds Max!
Cooool!
Excellent news. With Houdini Engine for Max it would become so much easier to cooperate.. TP, Fume, maya nucleus, even realflow could just share the same assets also bringing the opportunity to learn more of Houdini itself, which is simply cute.
I want it !!!!
Would be super great!! Vote for the MAX and Unity plugin! Great stuff!
Honestly the thing that would really excite me would’ve been having a procedural tool integrated right inside Max itself, ie. Genome/Lab, not something like this, I’m a Max user not a Houdini user.
That being said, I guess having this is better that not having this.
absolutely yes!!
bring houdini into max please 😀
Count me in. Awesome!!!
Yes i would like to see this plugin realized.
I used to use Prisms and then Houdini years back. Moved to 3d studio / 3dsmax because it was quicker for basic stuff. It would be good for both programs to get some interoperability.
Yes please!
I’ll be glad to see it in _near_future_ 🙂
Looks really cool, you have my vote.
YES I WANT 😉
YES me too
Houdini Engine for max !!! ; )
Yes, we all want it VERY much! Houdini + Max for the win
Yes we need it !!!
I think this would be awesome to have for 3DS Max. Please go ahead and bring Houdini Engine to it!
Interesting, but from it’s preview it seems to be a dynamic playback-like system for geometry or particles only. Something like Cortex (or Genome) is much better integrated into the 3ds max workflow (Modifiers, Textures, etc), just they do not have a similar sized development team… and fan base 😉
Nevertheless something visionary in the 3d world, so I’m excited as well…
Yes please consider adding support for 3dsmax. It would be a great companion to the visual effect tools that max currently has.
Yes, this would be a great addition to our workflow
add one more VERY interested vote to bring these two worlds together.
I vote !
great addition for max
very interesting!
please for Max, I think that’s open a Lot of possibilities,
Hope they do a max version soon! Pleeease SideFX!
Thanks for all the great feedback guys. We have posted a poll in our SideFX Labs forum to see what plug-in people would like to see after we have the other two in place.
Currently Max isn’t in the lead so I’ll leave it to you guys to beef up the numbers!
– http://bit.ly/16yChHq
Robert Magee
Side Effects Software
WTF man???
Are we supposed to create an account on your forum just to f**ing vote?
That’s very sly.
When you register for the site you can choose to never hear from us. The forum was simply the easiest place for me to set up the poll. No trickery intended. If you don’t want to register then keep posting here. I will keep an eye here too.
Robert Magee
for max would be awesome!
please add a vote from me
Now this looks promising…..
+1
Well there are 50+ “votes” here and only 17 on the Poll, I would guess to say that people just aren’t that interested.
@Chad, yeah I understand I did watch the vimeo, still seems a good idea. How practical is it for a freelancer, well not so much unless you just happen to be doing FX gigs for a houdini based company and that seems a bit of a stretch being a max artist.
That said I still think it is a great concept, much like building pf data operators, tp black boxes, or krakatoa blops and exposing user params, except your doing this with scene objects for interchange that you can actually interact with.
+100500 votes for integration plugin in 3ds MAX
@John, yeah, I know this is WIP and such, but I don’t see ANYTHING where the assets interact with ANYTHING in the host app. Like did the text collide with any Unity meshes? I didn’t see anything happening where you would be sampling another mesh, or texture, or vector field from the host app to provide inputs to Houdini. So all the awesome proceduralness is entirely self-contained? That’s not very liberating at all. It basically seems like a UI shortcut that replaces running Unity and Houdini side by side and using a .PC2 or Alembic interchange.
Ok, so maybe it means you don’t use a Houdini license? But we don’t know what the licensing is, so I don’t know. Now maybe for studios that run Houdini/Maya mixed pipelines this might be wonderful way to simplify their exports by building parameters instead of making a bunch of versions.
The assets will be capable of integrating with other assets. The demo shown was focused on the idea of getting a digital asset into anther application. We will have more examples later which allow you to input geometry from the host application then use the digital asset to process the results.
Side effect is an awesome company, they think 3D and artits, Autodesk think business only…
Nice to have this amazing tool for 3DSmax too
Any integration that allow major applications such as Houdini and Max to talk to each other better is welcome. The stronger the integration, the better obviously, but what 3D artist would not want to see this happen? FumeFX has started a bit with Field3D support, and I believe Thinkbox Software have some plans for integration with open formats (Siggraph maybe for news on this?).
My vote is definitely +1 and my perception is that most studios would benefit from this. The better integration gets between products, the more options studios will have to hire people who have the technical ability and talent but perhaps are mostly specialized in one or two 3D software packages (along with their plugins).
Studios, Side Effects, Autodesk, us artists; we’d all win from getting solutions like this.
If we can get geometry, particle, map, light, and other sampling as inputs to the Houdini Engine, then that would be really swell. Heck, if you can get that in Unity, I’d buy it too. 🙂
+1 big time
Xcellent..very great thing…++++11111
that would be awesome!
Yees ! We want it !
Of course it is VERY interesting! Please do it for max!
oui oui ouuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuiiiiiiii yes yes yes yeeeeeeeeeeeesssssssssssss
+1 ok nice very good
I love to see it is coming for Max! yes
VERY interesting of course we want it
Yes, I like the idea.
@ JohnnyRand
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Simply because most people don’t open Houdini at all 🙂
But in crowd compliance everybody happy.
For 3ds max may be not very important for couple reasons:
– most Max users are not technical – so they seat and wait somebody write asset for them?;
– most Max tools a faster to setup and render then Houdini and they cover many aspects(with lot of plugins for sure) ;
– there are now a lot of developers for Max(and Max a most known unstable package ) – if there is a problem or bug it’s all turn to complaint to each other.
But it’s very good that Houdini start to be more popular!
YEEEEEES
Yeah bring it on! 😀 It would be awesome to use both houdini, pflow and/or thinking particles together with houdini.
Yes please! If the operators that make Houdini Ocean Toolkit dance and sing in Houdini were included for Max I’d sing and dance. It’s great that software giants are prepared to do this is amazing. Help make my retirement fun!