I am working on writing Houdini Engine plugins for a few different simulators and other programs, including Paraview.
Paraview is open source and I have access to the source of the other applications.
All of the applications have primitive rendering engines.

Is this or is there an appropriate forum to share Houdini Engine development experiences? Not just questions for the gurus, but posts about progress…

For example, I intend to create an IPC link between a Houdini Engine and a Python script in Paraview. As a first step, I would do something like importing text from the Python script into the Houdini Engine. To do that I assume I would have to write a barebones engine and understand how to send and receive parameters.

Brad Carvey

I'd stick to questions to get the most out of this forum. That said, progress updates should be fine as well.

As to your question about an IPC link between Python and HE, I would look into the Thrift IDL we ship with Houdini - in the Houdini installation folder, under engine/thrift.

Thrift can generate python bindings as a client for our RPC Houdini Engine server (called HARS). This way, you don't have to re-implement every single HAPI call from scratch (and then keep it up to date as we make changes to the API).

Thanks, I will do both.

Brad Carvey

I assume you are the same Brad Carvey that worked on Newtek's video toaster? So you are working on Houdini Engine plugins for other programs? Do these by any chance include Lightwave and/or Modo?

Thanks