The only threads on this I've been able to find are almost a year old. Has there been any news about if and when Substance Designer and Houdini are going to become compatible?

update info here (in last month)

https://forum.allegorithmic.com/index.php?topic=668.msg37504#msg37504 [forum.allegorithmic.com]

I have a theory that Houdini engine is being viewed with some suspicion by Allegorithmic and they aren't exactly enthusiastic about collaboration anymore.

Substance designer is pretty cool, but it seriously lacks in usability for intermediate to complex procedural tasks.

If Side Effects can figure out something on the licensing that allows integration and distribution along the lines similar to what Allegorithmic has with Substance Engine, I would drop Substance altogether.

I'm coming from a Substance background interested in Houdini for mostly procedural modeling that can translate the speed, simplicity, and procedural nature of Substance.

I know Houdini can create procedural mats. Lyr are you saying that Houdini's procedural mat tools are better than SD's? I know that if used in conjunction with 3D models it can be much more effective as SD is limited to bitmaps, but what would material workflow in Houdini have as an advantage over Designer's.

Not interested in a war here. Just never thought of switching to Houdini for texture/material generation.

I think they would complement each other quite well. Yes, anything you do in substance could be done in Houdini (and more), but you could do everything we do in Houdini and substance in C++, yet there is a strong advantage to a higher level, accessible IDE

Substance designer does make certain things a lot easier and faster

Arvin Villapando
I'm coming from a Substance background interested in Houdini for mostly procedural modeling that can translate the speed, simplicity, and procedural nature of Substance.

I know Houdini can create procedural mats. Lyr are you saying that Houdini's procedural mat tools are better than SD's? I know that if used in conjunction with 3D models it can be much more effective as SD is limited to bitmaps, but what would material workflow in Houdini have as an advantage over Designer's.

Not interested in a war here. Just never thought of switching to Houdini for texture/material generation.

Yes, Houdini's procedural tools are more powerful than Substances. However Substance is more widely known in games and easier to distribute to other team members, asset stores, and end users, since Substance playback doesn't require a special license and is actually becoming an industry standard. It seems everywhere I look Substance support is being added to software. We can't say that for Houdini engine.

If you are interested in Houdini texturing I recommend the Rohan Dalvi vids: http://www.rohandalvi.net/textures [rohandalvi.net]

Thanks guys!

I actually have that one. Rohan does a really good job of explaining workflow.

My primary job is actually a texture artist. So far Substance has been great for use both as a texture generator and a pipeline tool. The problems I run into is there are certain textures and materials - particularly ones where elements overlap a certain way - where the tools fall short.

Also I think sometimes, despite how much tweaking you do, there is a hint of a procedural look that's tough to shake, no matter how nice your material is.

As good as the Rohan's mats were I didn't see anything there that couldn't be accomplished just as easily or nicely as in Designer. The workflow is different, but the results are pretty comparable imo.

So I guess my question here is - are there specific tools or workflows why you would say Houdini's procedural mats are better than Designers?

One thing I did notice watching the videos that SD would have over Houdini, is that SD has a faster refresh due to opengl. Even with a preview render it takes a minute to see an update. IDK. Like I said just curious here.

As far as the Houdini engine - I'm really hoping Sidefx removes the buy in restriction for it and release something like the Substance player. I've been interested in creating some 3D assets for environments that can be tweaked in realtime - and will still do it probably - but I think it'll be great to have it as accessible as the Substance engine. I think it'll do great for Sidefx too, but I understand having to keep a fee on it as I'm guessing that's used to maintain the engine.

I'm guessing it's significantly more complex than the substance engine as well seeing that it deals with geometry, physics, and particles as opposed to just bitmaps.

Houdini lacks any graphical representation from each node using materials

maybe side fx will look into this for version 16 - 17 ?

Maya Max ect all have graphical representation for materials nodes

and of course this is were Substance Designer shines

Allegorithmic's turnaround on releasing a Houdini plug-in was disappointing weak sauce.

Well Allegorithmic's been quite last few month not release much updates so fingers cross it will be some time soon™