Hey, I was wondering how often Houdini is used in Game Development. And is it even possible for it to be used with game development. Thanks for the help.

http://forums.odforce.net/index.php?showtopic=5814 [forums.odforce.net]

Just to name one.

You might be interested in this too: Torque for Houdini

http://www.sidefx.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1186&Itemid=66 [sidefx.com]

Hmm, I guess I am just wondering how much it is used in the Video Game Industry compared to 3DS Max or any other program. Thanks.

I can't answer your question but you may be interested in the new GDC Demo 2008 video in this site's Demo Reels section.

The summary says that it highlight features applicable to the development of video games.

I can pretty much tell you for a fact that it is hardly used at all. I have held Visual Effects Workshops for EA attended by Artists from all of our Studios around the world and had Visual Effects Artists not even know what Houdini is. So I always take time to educate them.

One of the reasons is that historically in games the majority of Visual Effects have been done by programmers and not much is done in any commercial 3D package like Max or Maya or Houdini. That is because of the real time nature of it and the fact that the game engines need highly specialized real time systems and assets to work in the game engine (sprite based particle systems, specially compressed textures, special real-time shaders, etc.).

Also, Maya and Max have targetted the Gaming Industry with specialized tools, so the Studios buy those packages for the modelling and animation needs (AND REAL TIME SHADER CREATION!!), and Effects people just use what is already working in the Studio pipeline. Also, Houdini has historically been VERY expensive and it generally is an uphill battle for an Effects Artist to get a budget conscious game studio to splurge on it for the few game assets it would have an advantage for.

That being said, I do use Houdini to Prototype and Pre-Vis and have used it for Cinematics, and I do use it for some asset creation like to create special textures for our in-game Sprites.

Now that Side Effects has started supporting things like .fbx, Collada, and has dropped the price (but where is Real Time Shader support?!?), I think there might be a shift as people discover it's advantages for Asset Management and Procedural Creation allowing fewer people to create more stuff cheaper as is desperately needed in these Next Gen games.

Cheers,
Craig Hoffman
Visual Effects Director
EA Tiburon

Thanks for the help!