Hi all,

I want to create a game using the unity engine. It will be a 3d platformer like super mario 3d world. The characters I plan to create are low poly as in super mario 3d world and will use rather simple animations (nothing like today's AAA games).
I am evaluating a 3d content creating tool now that I plan to use to create my assets. As I am a solo developer, still working 100% and also have a family I do not have a lot of time. Some hours on weekends, maybe 2 hours a day if I am lucky.
Therefore I am looking for a tool that is not too difficult to learn and allows me to model, rig, and animate my characters/assets. Ideally I can do everything using only one tool so I don't have to learn more than one tool.
I already tried Blender, but I can't work with it's interface. I just does not “klick” with me. Years ago I used Lightwave (9.6), so upgrading LW would be an option. Maya and Max are way too expensive for me, but Houdini Indie seems very nice and affordable!
So my questions:
- Is modeling in Houdini as straight-forward and fast as in Lightwave?
- Is it difficult to rig and animate a biped for unity?
- Is there anything that makes Houdini harder to use than other solution when it comes to game art?

I guess mainly I am looking to hear about other people's experiences using Houdini only to create game art?
Thanks!

every tool has it's pro's and con's and houdini is surly a tool that can handle a lot of your requirements. but there is one catch you have to learn houdini and that takes time.

what you can do is watch today's live event and get some impressions when you like it you will know whats next. i hope it will be fantastic!

Moin,

> Is modeling in Houdini as straight-forward and fast as in Lightwave?

No. Although it hurts to say that anything is NOT as “straight forward and fast as Lightwave”: Houdini has made some huge advances in modelling for sure, but it is not yet a “hands-on-free-the-artist's-mind-modeller”.
I would have a look at zBrush and the smaller version Pixologic released to acompany your Houdini license. That, I think, should give you THE FULL package.

> Is it difficult to rig and animate a biped for unity?

No. But keep in mind that for the final game output you will most likely still bake animations. But rigging and animation in Houdini is a blast.

> Is there anything that makes Houdini harder to use than other solution when it comes to game art?

That only you can answer

Marc

Stay with Lightwave if you know how to use it. Houdini being a procedural program is probably more than you need.

Hi！

Another game developer here! I just want to say about 1 year ago, I started to explore my personal 3d art resource pipeline when I am ready to go indie. I have tried max, maya, modo, etc. And finally I nailed down to zbrush+houdini+substance. I like zbrush because it is very Intuitive for someone who has more drawing skill than modeling skill, and I choose houdini(indie) because the power to create your own pipeline, tools and digital assets that can increase a lot of productivity when your working mind is in tuned with procedure generation. Working with houdini is often like visual programming(or scripting) which you you will encounter when using modern game engines like UE4 or Unity.

So personally I would say houdini is the beast choice for game developer who have light programming skills so you have the mindset for things like variables, logic and abstraction.

And houdini indie offer the best feature by price, which I think is a huge bouns.

Cheers
Kenyon

You very much can use Houdini for your gaming work. Sidefx is pushing big into the games arena last couple of releases and while it's ‘hands on’ modelling workflow may not be as robust as other packages, but as malbrecht pointed out, zbrush + Houdini indie is a solid combination.

You can certainly do straight on modelling as other packages in Houdini now. It is good enough though it can get better. My advise is not to get caught up into the Houdini node based concept if you find it too intimidating. Once you get comfortable with Houdini by using your workflow as in other apps, you can then start exploring the Houdini way of doing things in a more systematic manner.

One thing I can say about Houdini is that it won't limit your ideas.

Good luck.

I use houdini now as an indie developer and I love it! Once you get it set up for your workflow it can save you heaps of time.

Exporting to Unity works really well too, in my current scenes one button saves out a really clean version of the character with no fuss.
By the looks of it 16 has a nice auto rig too which could be handy!

Also as far as modeling goes I reckon you'll be fine if you're doing low poly stuff. Houdini has come a really long way with that recently and 16 only looks better.

I'm obviously pretty into it but I have worked heaps with Max and a fair amount with XSI and while maybe they are a little easier to learn, they just seem kinda limited compared to Houdini.

Indie is so cheap at the moment, just grab it and hassle people on the forums, another plus for Houdini - a great community

Game art must serve gameplay. Given that, Houdini is an ideal tool for game art. Good digital assets working inside your engine will allow you to iterate on game design in a way that is simply not possible with any other tool. For a game that takes Super Mario 3d world as it's inspiration this kind of capability will be extremely important.

Houdini is a very different tool from Lightwave and will initially be very frustrating, but as others have said just ask the community.

Once you have a handle on the basics of Houdini I highly recommend these videos: https://cmivfx.com/products/108-houdini-procedural-road-creation [cmivfx.com] https://cmivfx.com/products/110-houdini-procedural-road-creation-2 [cmivfx.com] While those two videos focus on roads, the techniques show can be used for a wider variety of structures. Most of what you see in super mario 3d world (not the characters) can be done with the techniques shown in those videos.

I started looking at Houdini last year and found it very intuitive, however I dropped using it due to the very poor Unity integration, which I found extremely buggy and frustrating. I felt that SideFX weren't really that interested in developing the Unity integration either.

Anyway I am back here looking at it again, as I simply don't want to write my own Unity editor plugins in order to speed-up level design so I am hoping the Unity integration has been improved. If not I will look at the Unreal Engine integration and if that is no better I will have to drop it again, which is something I don't want to do, given how powerful it is and great value-for-money.

I saw the Unreal Twitch stream where a SideFX staff member showed-off the Unreal integration and it looked much better than the Unity integration so there is still hope.

What were the problems you ran into with the Unity integration?

trojanfoe
however I dropped using it due to the very poor Unity integration, which I found extremely buggy and frustrating

If you're still having problems with Unity, please email support@sidefx.com or post on our dedicated Unity forum here: https://www.sidefx.com/forum/50/ [sidefx.com]

edward
What were the problems you ran into with the Unity integration?

My main issues were with creating and maintaining curves within the Unity scene. They would not always update and would sometimes be back-to-front. Sometimes they would disappear when reloading the project. They were just unreliable.

I also didn't like old meshes being left behind after they were replaced with freshly-baked ones. You had to manually remove them yourself, which seems unnecessary.

In the end it got so frustrating to manage it wasn't worth the effort.

I will be retrying again, particularly with H16 and I will report any on-going issues here.

Cheers,
Andy

trojanfoe
I also didn't like old meshes being left behind after they were replaced with freshly-baked ones. You had to manually remove them yourself, which seems unnecessary.

Yeah that seemed weird to me too. I couldn't really get into engine because it doesn't work with iOS projects, but I still love using Houdini with Unity.

It's really easy to make a node that will export only the parts of your scene that you need in Unity. In any other program that would be a lot of manual work (or scripting) that would be off putting when it comes to iterations.

peteski
It's really easy to make a node that will export only the parts of your scene that you need in Unity. In any other program that would be a lot of manual work (or scripting) that would be off putting when it comes to iterations.

Yeah I have no complaints about Houdini itself and thought it was amazing how I could just define the outline curve and edit some parameters and get both the geometry and the collision mesh I wanted (I was generating a low-poly cliff face at the time for a 2.5D game I was developing). It only took me about a week to get to that stage having never used Houdini before.

It was mainly the management of the curve within Unity that caused me to stop using it.

Thanks a lot for all the answers already! I will download apprentice in the next days and start learning. Some more questions I still have:
- Is there somewhere a tutorial shat shows how to animate and export a game character to unity or ue4?
- Is there a good organic and hard-surface modeling tutorial (preferably free) available?

My plan is to start to learn to model and UV-texture in houdini, then to rig, animate and export to game engines. I do not plan to use the whole simulations part. The videos where they show how levels are procedurally generated are really interesting to me as the iteration seems so fast which would be ideal for me as a solo dev.