Can we get rid of Orbolt and replace it with something better? I can't seem to be able to update any of the HDA's in H18, and even when it was kinda working it still seemed buggy as hell as far as keeping things synchronized and up to date.

I understand that many dislike change, but Orbolt just feels so outdated compared to everything else. In addition to that, a good chunk of the HDA's haven't been updated in ages, are deprecated/no longer work, or have been replaced by Houdini-native nodes. Also, many new users don't even know that Orbolt is a thing, it's just not talked about.

SideFX Labs is light years ahead in terms of how to efficiently distribute add-ons. Orbolt in comparison is like the alcoholic uncle that for some reason keeps getting invited to the Thanksgiving dinner even though he makes everyone very uncomfortable.

I would vote for a user-maintained/SideFX supervised repository of free add-ons. For anyone who wants to sell HDA's, there are plenty of outlets such as Gumroad.

There's got to be a better way.

Yeah, there's so many examples now of online marketplaces, with good templates for whats good, featured things, new releases etc (think apple's app store, epic store, steam etc), would love to get that level of quality and ease of use into orbolt, or an orbolt replacement.

I agree with all of this except the “free only” part… SideFX would have no motive to create such a service unless there was money moving around, and taking a (reasonable!) percentage of sales of paid assets would provide this motive. I'd love to not have to worry about writing my own license manager.

The core idea of Orbolt is good, it just needs an overhaul. A better UX, better curation and ability to discover new tools, the ability to distribute entire packages instead of just HDAs, etc.

I also think curation is key. I want to be able to find the best tools as fast as possible and when I download them I can trust, with a good amount of certainty, it will do what’s advertised if its a “featured” tool. Along with the obvious something that prevents people from positing duplicate tools. There needs to be some kind of screening process.

There also needs to be a way to communicate if there is a tool SideFX or the community has collectively decided is worthy of being recognized. If I saw cool stuff and knew I could readily download it I would. Even things like facebook posts about great new tools would be good the same way SideFX posts about exceptional work every one and a while.

I’m not sure if SideFX could commit to there being an “Orbolt Curation Team” that does this kind of stuff but its just a thought.

Random other ideas would be easy ways to get in touch with the developer, maybe like a mini form on the tool’s page where people can comment or seek advice. For developers to easily be able to get in touch with their users when they have updates or bug fixes. Rating system for tools. Being able to type up wiki style docs for your tools if its a suite of tools. Opt in usage statistics so you as a developer can know what tools you have are popular / worthy of continuing to work on, etc.

Not sure how many indie plug-in developers are out there, but I would like it if there was a way to have orbolt work with HDAs and plug-ins then obviously installs all the files in the right place so its wicked easy to get started. One issue I have is people not understanding where to install plug-in files. Also, an API to connect to the orbolt license server through C++.

Finally, about orbolt as brand. Maybe a complete rebrand is in order. Especially when people's mind's jump directly to how bad the current platform is upon hearing the name.

Who actually runs/owns Orbolt? Is it SideFX or is it a 3rd party company?


What I would love to see for Houdini add-ons is a site similar to AeScripts which I think is quite excellent at how it's organized:

https://aescripts.com [aescripts.com]

Orbolt is run by SideFX.

AEScripts is a nice start, the curation is there. Needs more visible things like ratings and downloads as well. My best examples for curation / discovery are Steam, the iOS store and the Unity Asset Store.

Unity's store also has built-in communication tools for developers… I automatically get emailed when there's updates to FinalIK or Amplify.

Not sure whether this is realistic, but couldn't we just ask the founder of https://www.blendswap.com/ [www.blendswap.com] to double up his page? And perhaps one or two guys from our community would act as moderators?

MattPuchala
I also think curation is key. I want to be able to find the best tools as fast as possible and when I download them I can trust, with a good amount of certainty, it will do what’s advertised if its a “featured” tool. Along with the obvious something that prevents people from positing duplicate tools. There needs to be some kind of screening process.

i like curation idea. like steam. that would be fun and useful

Now with the release of H18.5 and SideFX focusing more and more on the content library [www.sidefx.com] I think it's worth giving this another bump.

Is the content library here to replace Orbolt? Will it get a cool little integration into Houdini?

With Houdini Engine becoming free for Unreal/Unity this topic is more relevant than ever.
Houdini Digital Assets might be making an entry in the Unreal/Unity marketplaces and to me it would make much more sense to have SideFX marketplace since they're often not about Unreal/Unity, but rather about Houdini.

I hope that things are happening behind the scenes.

i dissagrtee with the whole website thing.

The only thing thats lacking is better in app ui working on the rest is a waiste of time.

+1 Bumping this.

Orbolt is a great idea, but a dated implementation.

I'd love to see SideFX give it love in several ways:

Update the website so it doesn't feel so dated, I know this seems purely cosmetic but unfortunately I think it makes a difference when users are comparing buying assets from Gumroad or Artstation then you see Orbolt... and it just comes across as almost abandoned. Please look at other modern digital stores, I like artstation & gumroad a lot, epic marketplace as well.

Needs a way for sellers to easily refund users (maybe I missed it?)

I also find it harder to prepare & sell an asset on orbolt than gumroad, even an HDA. If I sell on gumroad I can package a zip file with anything, multiple hip files, hda's, pdf documentation etc. With Orbolt I have to do things like stip the HDA version number because Orbolt gets confused and will think a different asset version is a different asset. I couldn't get the orbolt tools built into houdini to even work.

Maybe I'm missing it but it also doesn't seem like there is an easy way to edit an orbolt listing. I had listed three videos on my Orbolt page and it ordered them last to first on the asset page. I wanted to change the order so edited the page and it acts like you are uploading a new asset version.

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All that said, I think it would really be best if SideFX takes an approach like valve does with steam - let us upload & sell assets with orbolt, handle the licence conversions and licensing.... but also give us asset keys like steam does to allow us to sell orbolt managed & hosted assets though other asset stores such as artstation & gumroad.

Steam does this and it has only helped them because it ensures that even if you can do all your own promotion, hosting etc. you still might as well put it on steam and sell steam keys because valve doesn't even get a cut from a steam key.

I think sidefx / houdini & orbolt are a perfect use case for this steam / steam key type approach.

Thank you for reading!