Houdini plugin

[Techie]

Hi,

Are there any plans for a fully integrated Houdini plugin?

[Zom-B]

At the moment you can only use houdini via C4D connection, but I could imagine that C4D viewport is a bitch with intens simulations :/
No idea about exporter plans, but afaik it isn't that easy to find capable exporter writers...

[CTZn]

Historically, with its freeware origins, it has always been exporters writers coming to Indigo with a solution for their host application.

I used to push users with requests such as yours to find willing developers in THEIR community (Houdini). They'd be welcomed !

[Techie]

@Zom-B: Yeah I guess that's the only way for now.

@CTZn: Ah ok but what about the Revit plugin, isn't that developed by Glare? Also I wouldn't mind paying extra for a Houdini plugin if it meant it would be continually updated. And now that Houdini Indie 15.5 supports 3rd party renderers it's a nice opportunity to make a plugin for it.

[tokyomegaplex]

I know a few people who would be super interested in a Houdini plugin happening. There is no development currently I am guessing?

[jiversen]

I wrote a prototype plugin some years ago for Indigo for Houdini but couldn't find the time to make it anything useful. If the Indigo guys want to get into a broadening market, there is an industry turn toward writing open source USD/Hydra render delegates these days. (see PrMan, 3delight/OpenNSI and so on)

Has any thought been put forward toward doing this?

[sger]

I am interested

hi

[Ascensi]

I'm very interested in this.. I'm surprised Indigo team hasn't jumped on this.. with all the amazing content that's created with Houdini the artists here using Indigo could submit to a gallery on the website showcasing what could be done - you know generate more interest in Indigo, get more customers =growing team =faster development.

Octane became big fairly quickly because they developed a plugin for almost every major 3D Industry/toolset but they are limiting themselves with overpricing and not allowing the purchase of individual plugins.

I think the smart way to cut into the market is make a plugin that supports all the major brands and when people buy it that you don't limit them to a plugin brand like Maya or Max, or Houdini etc you allow them the freedom to plugin to any of them - a plugin is a plugin. So getting speed and all the essentials for rendering is good but please jump into a universal plugin to all the major industries and it would most likely guarantee customers purchasing upgrades to support the advances of their 3D applications.

I'd also like to add that you could charge more for render nodes because people will need them for large renderings but mostly people will want the basics to render out their portfolio first and advance from there.

[corew2020]

I wrote a prototype plugin some years ago for Indigo for Houdini but couldn't find the time to make it anything useful.

what kind of prototype, how does it work?

[jiversen]

The prototype I wrote was SOHO-based (the python rendering interface inside of Houdini) and could translate most Indigo entities okay. Well, Indigo as it was like a decade ago or something. I never tried it at any high scale, I'll be honest.

However, these days it would seem that the Indigo guys could consider writing a USD Hydra Render Delegate and thus slip into Houdini Solaris and several other places -- in fact, wherever Hydra delegates are supported (Katana/Maya/etc), which seem to be in more and more places each year. Hydra delegates are C++ and intended to be scalable and fast, and it's under constant improvement by Pixar.

[schwungsau]

simple exporter for houdini should be simple but why bother, you just can use blender as an exporter?

a deeper integration into houdini would much better.

hydra makes for future, current solaris is still far away for usable rendertool.