Hello!

I'm not really that experienced with alot of 3d software packages, but i do use blender from time to time. Mostly in combination with live footage, as my main job is compositing/video-editing/animating. Lately i've been looking around for fun, and i stumbled across Houdini. I tried it and i gotto say, it's pretty awesome. The node-based workflow is extremely convenient and matches my way of thinking exactly, which i can't really say for blender (even though blender is still really awesome)

I just have one question before i get too excited and i can't really find a clear answer so far. In blender there is the famous EEVEE render engine, which is able to render in realtime if things don't get too fancy. This is really keeping me from switching, i think. Is there a similar engine available (paid or unpaid) for Houdini? Or is there a seemless transition possible between unreal/unity which doesn't need an extra study?

Karma (the new inbuilt renderer) is planned to get gpu acceleration. Right now, it is cpu only. Maybe, that will change already with the announced H18.5?

Redshift (3rd-party gpu renderer) will get a realtime-mode in the near future. Redshift's shaders are not mantra/karma compatible, though.

But, in their current state, karma and redshift are already quite low-latency.

There are quite a couple of other render plugins available. But I don't have any experience regarding them.

ah yes, i just learned about karma. seems like something very interesting. looks close to the blender cycles renderer in terms of speed/quality as it is now. Looking forward to october 15th (as mentioned in the 18.5 sneek peek), hopefully it will shed some light on this subject. Exciting times to jump in i guess!

by the way, Redshift RT does also look very promising

rickvdvulkaan
In blender there is the famous EEVEE render engine, which is able to render in realtime if things don't get too fancy. This is really keeping me from switching, i think. Is there a similar engine available (paid or unpaid) for Houdini?

No, and as a matter of fact it's one of the reasons why I'm actually going the other way and using Blender more and more lately.

Houdini does have a viewport OpenGL implementation that is actually not bad, and my understanding is that Houdini 18.5 will bring some additional capabilities to it. Will it be as satisfying as EEVEE? I don't think so, and Blender now has over two years head-start over everyone else (as well as the excellent Cycles which is far faster than Mantra and already GPU capable). Karma is CPU based, and while as an IPR it's decent, don't expect EEVEE or even Cycles-like functionality or performance.

In Houdini I've been using 3Delight which, while being CPU-based, is actually quite fast. If you're interested I have quite a number of tutorials on my channel: www.youtube.com/c/RightBrainedTutorials

3Delight is good and has a fully functional free-tier, but once again it ain't EEVEE!

https://www.3delight.com [www.3delight.com]

Other than that, beware of any futureware hype at the moment – this goes across the board for Redshift RT, Brigade, Unreal 5, etc. The proof is in the pudding and there is no pudding yet and there won't be for quite some time. Use what you need that is available right now!


P.S.

Here's the basic state of the Houdini OpenGL implementation, although they did add fog/atmosphere lately and, as I mentioned, there are a couple of other bells and whistles coming soon:

https://www.sidefx.com/tutorials/game-tools-quick-material/ [www.sidefx.com]

Midphase
Other than that, beware of any futureware hype at the moment – this goes across the board for Redshift RT, Brigade, Unreal 5, etc. The proof is in the pudding and there is no pudding yet and there won't be for quite some time. Use what you need that is available right now!

I agree in general. Regarding redshift rt, have a look at their development trello. The demo vid is quite confidence-inspiring:

https://trello.com/b/QASr74yB/redshift [trello.com]

https://trello-attachments.s3.amazonaws.com/5db0dc5e4c80247745b66745/5db0dc5fa9caf9342c416221/2fe2c3acc069242974032f190df9824c/Redshift_RT_Attic_7.21.2020.mp4 [trello-attachments.s3.amazonaws.com]

Midphase
No, and as a matter of fact it's one of the reasons why I'm actually going the other way and using Blender more and more lately.

that is quite interesting. The reason why i'm kind of heading the opposite way is that i always had the feeling that i was missing out on some kind of procedural way of working. I'm already used to compositing software like fusion, and i was always asking myself, why can't a 3d model/animation package be like that? and after searching the web, that's how stumbled on houdini. after trying it out now, i'm pretty sure that the way of working matches my mindset way better. some modelling stuff is still clunky to my taste, but i'm only getting started.

blender has some interesting development going on though (the ‘'everything nodes’' project), but houdini is ofcourse way ahead.

I think the render part is the only thing that is holding me back a little, eventually, at the end of the day i have to be able to deliver. so i hope sooner or later there will be some kind of realtime-ish alternative to mantra, or at least the speed of cycles, so Karma looks promising. (who chose that name though?:/)

There are pros and cons to the procedural nature of Houdini. For scene layout, world creation and other high-level stuff it's pretty amazing. However try modeling in Houdini for 5 minutes and you'll be pulling your hair out and wondering how in the world you now have a crazy long node tree despite having only done pretty minor stuff. When it comes to modeling, the procedural nature of Houdini doesn't always work, resulting in errors if you change elements upstream in certain cases.

The thing that Blender has done spectacularly well is integrating the render engine into the viewport for a seamless way to interactively do look dev. With either EEVEE or Cycles (on a fast CPU/GPU), one can literally model/texture/light while looking at a near-finish quality image – that is amazing!

I do find EEVEE to be limited however. It's far too easy to bring it to its knees with some complex textures and geometry. Works well for Ian Hubert, but he seems to be mostly mapping photos to very simple geometry for the most part which would explain why he keeps EEVEE responsive all the time.

Karma is not quite the same as the Cycles IPR. It's unfortunately limited in availability to the Solaris context which is a massive kick in the nuts IMHO, I have no idea why they couldn't get it to work within the OBJ context.

3Delight (I know…I sound like a broken record) is actually working on exactly that – an interactive viewport IPR at the OBJ level that is very Blender-style. It's supposedly coming very soon (i.e. in about a month or so), but once again the proof will be in the pudding.

Ultimately I can't see myself choosing either or. I think I will end up using Blender for some stuff, and Houdini for other stuff. The good part is that there is absolutely no reason why DCC's need to be exclusive (except for those pesky keyboard shortcuts…there's only so much RAM for that stuff in my brain!).

I think it would be good to have a EEVEE equivalent. Especially when you are working on volumes and sss stuff. Without GPU IPR you will spend more time tuning the material.

May I recommend Renderman from Pixar — it is totally sick now! Renderman used to be for Phd’s in 3D and not the rest of us. It has an XPU renderer (for $595) which uses CPU and GPU for the real-time render native in Houdini and Blender. With the new Presets Browser it is drag and drop just like some other addons for Blender - but it is wicked fast like Redshift and has the full production render (RIS) and full Renderman materials etc.

You can try Renderman out for free with a non-commercial license, but XPU requires a commercial license (well worth it for how sick it is.)

This is was done in minutes: Draw in Blender, right-click open “Use Renderman”, drop in a dome and materials (click, click), click use XPU, press render - Boom! gorgeous! - super fast. 56% in a minute (looks as good as 100%) - a 4k image totally nuts!


I used it with Renderman’s ‘it’ renderer window open next to Houdini and it rendered real time(well - super fast) on my $1500 Costco laptop (with NVIDIA 2070 card).