Hey guys,

I know that using it in runtime is not supported at the moment. But I would like to know why.

My guess is the licence issue. I mostly use Unity for building creative experience for installations. I believe most developers in our industry wouldn't mind to spend a few hundred USD for a Houdini Engine annual license on a single machine just to be able to use the HDA in runtime.

It is a real shame that we can't use it in runtime because Houdini kicks ass to create generative assets. Anyone had the similar thought?

This is precisely the reason why I wanted to use Houdini, paid for the license and then found out I couldn't do it. This happened to me almost 2 years ago and they were already looking into it back then.

I just came back here from the steam page once I noticed they had indie licenses over there now; i was hoping this issue would have been cleared by now but apparently we still can't use the engine to generate in real-time.

I've already stated this somewhere in the forums, but for game development this almost defeats 80% of the convenience of using Houdini.

I can think of the top of my head of a workflow that would allow me to work almost in the same way that the Houdini Engine for games is usually used for but in Blender (particularly if you're using Sverchok) and Blender is free.

Being able to move a slider in the editor to change the look of an asset is convenient but really if it can't be done in real-time then there's no point in spending the money on a license from the indie perspective, Blender can offer similar workflows without the need to learn a completely different software in paradigms to most of the 3D software out there(like Houdini) and can also leverage Houdini's paradigms through plugins such as Sverchok which albeit aren't as efficient as Houdini's nodes but once again probably good enough considering the price difference in comparison to the advantages offered by the Houdini Engine.

Just as we don't have the man power to design 1000 chairs, we don't have the will to move 10000 sliders.

The point of using Houdini is the proceduralism itself, and not being able to leverage this to our advantages in real-time is the ONLY reason why I still use Blender as my sole 3D editor after all these years in modeling.

I thought Houdini was my thing, and unfortunately it kinda really is, but this one detail just disables its utility in my specific scenario.


If you can work around not being able to leverage this in real-time then more power to u, but I am the kind of guy who doesn't really see a big benefit in speed just from having editor control over an asset's look; sure it can always be convenient but I'm just not sure I'll leverage THAT enough.

As a one man team it's hard to code and design everything yourself, and proceduralism helps you tackle this. Not if you can't do it in real-time though, since even the task of building all those levels by hand is daunting enough, let alone designing the assets one by one.




Pls SideFX, Houdini is the best - don't limit it in such ways… I really wanna get a license again but I can't bring myself to bare this single fact.


You have an engine that could change the entire industry, particularly in a time where it's clear this is the future.

Why not make the big move now? You'd make a lot more cash and secure the indie market imo, if only devs knew they could use your engine in this way.

Hey!

Are there any updates on this?
We have a game where we generate all level geometry by code but it's hard to have artists working with that.
We'd like to convert to Houdini if it's possible to modify values during run-time and generate levels that way.

Thanks!

I am definitely interested in hearing about this as well. I suppose it is my own fault for not realizing that this was not capable of doing this, but having something called the Houdini Engine in my game certainly made me think it was capable of runtime processing. Otherwise perhaps calling it Houdini Editor Integration or Editor Link might help with any confusion. I must have just missed the documentation explaining this in my excitement to finally get my hands on it.

Me too, i can't believe it. i can't understand their strategy about that, it's unbelieveble they don't allow it even people are ready to pay for it, but i think in the end people will find alternative solutions and they will loose a part of the market, gathering indie developers which are searching the best solutions to ease the asset production process. but i think indie developers are not their target clients, they are more focused on big VFX productions studios who gets bigger budgets to spend on 3D softwares. I'm a game developer using procedural 3D assets creation through Unity and Unreal Engine, but the bad thing is that you have to build your scripts separtly depending on your game engine target. Everybody is looking for a common asset creation tool between Unity and Unreal Engine, and many of us are ready to put the price for it. When you see this software is closed to this point, you just want to run away and find your own path with more indie developer friendly solutions, and not meaning necesseraly free, but providing you real solutions to gain time on your asset creation process.

@sachaamm There is Sorcar for Blender too which is open source obviously. It could be that somebody will make something for Unity at some point. But even then it's probably very far away in time.

Now that Houdini Engine has been made available for free, is it maybe time to review this licensing policy as well ?
Having the flexibility of Houdini Engine at runtime is hugely valuable for developers of sandbox games/training apps like us.