Hey everyone,

wanted to share my implementation of Houdini Engine for Godot [github.com].

For a quick overview, check this video [youtu.be].

I took a bit of a different approach from official implementations. It's a C++ GDExtension for Godot, which exposes Houdini nodes as classes to GDScript. So you could theoretically write your own Godot tool scripts to start and stop sessions, create and connect nodes in Houdini, and retrieve geometry data. You can even configure which attributes to read and split by.

Recently I also introduced a default solution similar to the HoudiniAssetActor in Unreal. The HEGoNode3D works with a bottom panel, which generates UI for parameters and inputs, and supports spawning meshes, instancing existing ones via MultiMeshInstance3D nodes, and spawning registered classes, instantiating scenes, and setting custom properties on spawned objects.

Would appreciate any feedback. If you run into any issues, please don't hesitate to ask for help. It's heavy WIP and a bit of a learning project for me(started it to learn C++), so some issues are expected.

Currently it sadly does require a commercial Houdini license. If you're an indie user, I'm still interested in your input though, as I could imagine SideFx might eventually allow it to be used with Indie licenses.

Cheers

I don't think there's actually any reason commercial plugins can't be built for Indie. They probably just need to be built against the Indie version of Houdini / Engine in order to run in it, which I'm guessing is just a build flag, but I haven't done any plugin building for Houdini so I'm not sure.

I know Renderman XPU works with it just fine.

It's only the free / community version that can't use 3rd party plugins.

is there any update on this? Seems like there would be a lot of crossover between Indie users and Godot users...

i actually only haven't tried Godot because i couldn't use Houdini with it. and it's a bit of a bummer because Unreal Editor is a bit much for my computer.

Would love an indie version, hopefully someone at sidefx can make this work with indie

Tim van Helsdingen
Would love an indie version, hopefully someone at sidefx can make this work with indie

Plus one for that

Recently released a pretty big update [github.com] to the plugin. The API can now convert heightfields to Godot images and vice versa, and this is used in HEGoNode3D to bridge to the Terrain3D plugin. CSG inputs are also supported now and there were a few performance improvements. The API is now also documented inside the engine editor and a web version of the documentation is available on readthedocs [hego.readthedocs.io]

Also, it works on Linux now.

Sadly still no Indie support, but I'm talking to SideFx about it and they seem very open to it. I don't have an indie license myself to test with, but both the Houdini Engine FAQ and the API documentation say that Indie doesn't allow third party plugins outside of the official ones, so I'm guessing there's some sort of check for which host process started a session.

This video is more of an updated general introduction and not really focused on just the new features, but thought I'd share anyways. Will hopefully find the time to make a more in depth video focused on just the update on the weekend.