This is precisely the reason why I wanted to use Houdini, paid for the license and then found out I couldn't do it. This happened to me almost 2 years ago and they were already looking into it back then.
I just came back here from the steam page once I noticed they had indie licenses over there now; i was hoping this issue would have been cleared by now but apparently we still can't use the engine to generate in real-time.
I've already stated this somewhere in the forums, but for game development this almost defeats 80% of the convenience of using Houdini.
I can think of the top of my head of a workflow that would allow me to work almost in the same way that the Houdini Engine for games is usually used for but in Blender (particularly if you're using Sverchok) and Blender is free.
Being able to move a slider in the editor to change the look of an asset is convenient but really if it can't be done in real-time then there's no point in spending the money on a license from the indie perspective, Blender can offer similar workflows without the need to learn a completely different software in paradigms to most of the 3D software out there(like Houdini) and can also leverage Houdini's paradigms through plugins such as Sverchok which albeit aren't as efficient as Houdini's nodes but once again probably good enough considering the price difference in comparison to the advantages offered by the Houdini Engine.
Just as we don't have the man power to design 1000 chairs, we don't have the will to move 10000 sliders.
The point of using Houdini is the proceduralism itself, and not being able to leverage this to our advantages in real-time is the ONLY reason why I still use Blender as my sole 3D editor after all these years in modeling.
I thought Houdini was my thing, and unfortunately it kinda really is, but this one detail just disables its utility in my specific scenario.
If you can work around not being able to leverage this in real-time then more power to u, but I am the kind of guy who doesn't really see a big benefit in speed just from having editor control over an asset's look; sure it can always be convenient but I'm just not sure I'll leverage THAT enough.
As a one man team it's hard to code and design everything yourself, and proceduralism helps you tackle this. Not if you can't do it in real-time though, since even the task of building all those levels by hand is daunting enough, let alone designing the assets one by one.
Pls SideFX, Houdini is the best - don't limit it in such ways… I really wanna get a license again but I can't bring myself to bare this single fact.
You have an engine that could change the entire industry, particularly in a time where it's clear this is the future.
Why not make the big move now? You'd make a lot more cash and secure the indie market imo, if only devs knew they could use your engine in this way.
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Houdini Engine for Unity » Houdini Engine for Unity in Runtime
- EnriquePage91
- 4 posts
- Offline
Technical Discussion » Realtime processing of Houdini Assets inside Unity (same thing for UE4 though)
- EnriquePage91
- 4 posts
- Offline
Hello guys!!
So I'm relatively new to Houdini, and originally got into it because of it's procedural functionality (I come from a slightly technical background) since I figured I would be able to simply run the Houdini Engine directly through my game's builds - this however seems not to be the case - limiting the functionality of the Houdini Engine to the Editor itself.
This seems to be a big problem to me since I had built most of my tools with the idea in mind that I would later be altering the parameters of these with random functions at runtime (in order to have a “procedural world”).
I read on the forums that this is something that the SideFX team is seriously looking into since they are aware of how limiting this might end up being for indie developers - my concern is whether this is still being looked into or not - since I saw this on a few posts but all of these were at least a year old.
I would really appreciate an update on the matter since I was building this game for my thesis, which I have to submit this semester (meaning that if Houdini will still not be able to do what I intended it to do for my project by the time I have to submit it, I'm gonna have to rethink the whole idea).
thank you so much in advance for any details you guys can give me,
I really appreciate it!
——————-
Enrique
So I'm relatively new to Houdini, and originally got into it because of it's procedural functionality (I come from a slightly technical background) since I figured I would be able to simply run the Houdini Engine directly through my game's builds - this however seems not to be the case - limiting the functionality of the Houdini Engine to the Editor itself.
This seems to be a big problem to me since I had built most of my tools with the idea in mind that I would later be altering the parameters of these with random functions at runtime (in order to have a “procedural world”).
I read on the forums that this is something that the SideFX team is seriously looking into since they are aware of how limiting this might end up being for indie developers - my concern is whether this is still being looked into or not - since I saw this on a few posts but all of these were at least a year old.
I would really appreciate an update on the matter since I was building this game for my thesis, which I have to submit this semester (meaning that if Houdini will still not be able to do what I intended it to do for my project by the time I have to submit it, I'm gonna have to rethink the whole idea).
thank you so much in advance for any details you guys can give me,
I really appreciate it!
——————-
Enrique
Houdini Lounge » REALLY annoyed with Houdini right now
- EnriquePage91
- 4 posts
- Offline
Amazing how fast you guys are suggesting things. I'm glad the support is so good because I really want to stick with Houdini.
I am back at home now where I still have an older version of Houdini (the different computers I've been experiencing this crash on back in college are all up to date). I've tried reproducing the crashes back at home and I am not getting any so everything seems to be fine here.
I know Houdini was working fine in these college computers I just mentioned 2 or 3 months ago since I didn't have these problems and I know they haven't changed the GPUs but I can check as soon as I am able to meet with our technician to see what they're running and what the drivers are to give you guys more information.
The steps to reproduce are really simply splitting any pane. That by itself crashed or froze Houdini (in these College computers). The same would occur after a few minutes of using it even if I didn't split the pane tab, but essentially just splitting the panes would freeze the program or crash it, even on a new file, with nothing on it yet. I split the panes with both the interface and with keyboard commands and both methods presented the same problem although for some reason somehow using keyboard commands seemed to generate longer periods of freezing.
Thank you so much for your support and will keep you up to date about the subject
I am back at home now where I still have an older version of Houdini (the different computers I've been experiencing this crash on back in college are all up to date). I've tried reproducing the crashes back at home and I am not getting any so everything seems to be fine here.
I know Houdini was working fine in these college computers I just mentioned 2 or 3 months ago since I didn't have these problems and I know they haven't changed the GPUs but I can check as soon as I am able to meet with our technician to see what they're running and what the drivers are to give you guys more information.
The steps to reproduce are really simply splitting any pane. That by itself crashed or froze Houdini (in these College computers). The same would occur after a few minutes of using it even if I didn't split the pane tab, but essentially just splitting the panes would freeze the program or crash it, even on a new file, with nothing on it yet. I split the panes with both the interface and with keyboard commands and both methods presented the same problem although for some reason somehow using keyboard commands seemed to generate longer periods of freezing.
Thank you so much for your support and will keep you up to date about the subject
Edited by EnriquePage91 - Dec. 8, 2016 22:51:21
Houdini Lounge » REALLY annoyed with Houdini right now
- EnriquePage91
- 4 posts
- Offline
Hello guys, I hope you're having a great time today.
I am not a super experienced user in Houdini, I started picking it up little over a year ago unfortunately since I am still studying 3d Animation and my major's preference is towards Maya so I can only study and do Houdini every so and then.
I've been using the apprentice version for a while, however I recently (over 2 or 3 months ago) got the 1 year license since I plan on releasing a game eventually with it. Up to date, I've stayed with the Apprentice version since I am working on several computers (because of school); I am still not ready to bring my apprentice files into the commercial version.
All of these computers (my computer at home, and all the computers I've been using in College)) used to handle Houdini just fine a few months ago. However…. A week ago, I decided to start working on Houdini again (but I was planning on finally getting involved in a serious fashion since my thesis is due in a few months and I haven't finished modeling my procedural assets for my game). The problem I am having right now, is that for some reason Houdini keeps on CRASHING. CONSTANTLY. Like seriously bad - it will crash when I add nodes sometimes, it will crash when I SPLIT THE PANES (like, seriously….. what's up with that?). Hell, I'm not even modeling anything serious at the moment! I was practicing my basic concepts of procedural modeling, such as copying curves from one point to the other, merging them into a single object, skinning stuff… blablabla. Nothing too serious, never had more than literally 30 vertexes so I have a hard time believing this is something I am causing myself.
I am really concerned about this since now I feel really cheated - I didn't pay 200 hundred dollars for a program that crashes more than a 10 year old riding a Bus for the first time. I seriously doubt that splitting a pane should crash ANY program - it just seems ridiculous - and I don't see why this would all of a sudden be a problem when it wasn't one at all a few months ago.
I really love the way Houdini works *when it works*, but right now it's just not doing the trick for me. I would really like to keep using this software - hell, I love it - but if even splitting a pane is going to freeze my screen and crash the program every single time I do it, I seriously doubt I'll be doing any more Houdini in the future - no serious software should have issues such as these. I am really not doing ANYTHING complicated. I am not overloading the graphics card with operations or generation of geometry at all - I can't even split a pane tab on a new file without Houdini starting to act like crazy.
I googled my problem but couldn't find much - I am wondering whether this might just be a bug on the current version or not - really hoping it is and that it will get fixed as soon as possible because at the moment I find it impossible to even run the program.
If anyone else is running into this I would be very grateful if I could hear about your experience.
Thanks guys!
I am not a super experienced user in Houdini, I started picking it up little over a year ago unfortunately since I am still studying 3d Animation and my major's preference is towards Maya so I can only study and do Houdini every so and then.
I've been using the apprentice version for a while, however I recently (over 2 or 3 months ago) got the 1 year license since I plan on releasing a game eventually with it. Up to date, I've stayed with the Apprentice version since I am working on several computers (because of school); I am still not ready to bring my apprentice files into the commercial version.
All of these computers (my computer at home, and all the computers I've been using in College)) used to handle Houdini just fine a few months ago. However…. A week ago, I decided to start working on Houdini again (but I was planning on finally getting involved in a serious fashion since my thesis is due in a few months and I haven't finished modeling my procedural assets for my game). The problem I am having right now, is that for some reason Houdini keeps on CRASHING. CONSTANTLY. Like seriously bad - it will crash when I add nodes sometimes, it will crash when I SPLIT THE PANES (like, seriously….. what's up with that?). Hell, I'm not even modeling anything serious at the moment! I was practicing my basic concepts of procedural modeling, such as copying curves from one point to the other, merging them into a single object, skinning stuff… blablabla. Nothing too serious, never had more than literally 30 vertexes so I have a hard time believing this is something I am causing myself.
I am really concerned about this since now I feel really cheated - I didn't pay 200 hundred dollars for a program that crashes more than a 10 year old riding a Bus for the first time. I seriously doubt that splitting a pane should crash ANY program - it just seems ridiculous - and I don't see why this would all of a sudden be a problem when it wasn't one at all a few months ago.
I really love the way Houdini works *when it works*, but right now it's just not doing the trick for me. I would really like to keep using this software - hell, I love it - but if even splitting a pane is going to freeze my screen and crash the program every single time I do it, I seriously doubt I'll be doing any more Houdini in the future - no serious software should have issues such as these. I am really not doing ANYTHING complicated. I am not overloading the graphics card with operations or generation of geometry at all - I can't even split a pane tab on a new file without Houdini starting to act like crazy.
I googled my problem but couldn't find much - I am wondering whether this might just be a bug on the current version or not - really hoping it is and that it will get fixed as soon as possible because at the moment I find it impossible to even run the program.
If anyone else is running into this I would be very grateful if I could hear about your experience.
Thanks guys!
Edited by EnriquePage91 - Dec. 8, 2016 22:52:16
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