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Well-executed teaser by SideFX for a new product(?) called "Houdini Indie"

Everybody's talking about it, merely based on this one tweet (hence: well-executed).

edit: corrected stupid typo in title...

Ooh?

Err..what?

Some kind of Houdini light for game developers?

Houdini Indie

Houdini Indie makes all of Houdini’s animation and VFX tools available under a limited commercial license to independent animators and game makers who want to use Houdini during the incubation stage of their business.

Priced at $199, it seems to replace the Apprentice HD version, with the added "limited commercial license",
but it is as of yet unclear to me, if this license will be perpetual or again limited to some fixed term like a 12(?) month program...

annual

This is pretty damn fantastic. A near enough fully functioning version of Houdini as long you don't earn too much money from it. Apprentice HD is great but is not for commercial use at all.

Fixed term or perpetual, $199 is very cheap.

True, for both options it's cheap. But I'd be willing to pay more for a perpetual license. I don't want to rent my software.

Hirazi Blue wrote:True, for both options it's cheap. But I'd be willing to pay more for a perpetual license. I don't want to rent my software.

Perpetual licenses are becoming a thing of the past unfortunately. We will tell our grandchildren about them in years to come.

Fair offer, definitively. Somehow psychologically appreciate this app because is "weird in advance". While some others are looking like "normal" 3d app (normal 3d app = Softimage), but they are not, really.

I agree with Sam on this one. Its going to get much harder to get a perpetual licence of anything.

Well Blender is improving so that will push more people out of "difficult license software".

But if you think about it, this offer is very good. $ 200 a year for your one-man studio. So you'll need 22 years until you spent the total amount of the full priced license.

And if you are making $100k a year, you'll be able to buy the full license.


There's some restrictions, like no 3rd party renders, max output for animations at 1080. But other than that ... it's a very good idea. I've just downloaded the apprentice version to see if I finally learn this darn thing.

If you compare it to let's say ... 3ds Max. 3ds Max with plugins is a very powerful option for FX work (which I love), but ... you would spend more than 9k just for the basics (3ds Max + Krakatoa + FumeFX + V-Ray + ThinkingParticles + RayFire). So yes ... it's cheaper to just buy Modo to do the modeling and the rest (if you are able to learn it) do it in Houdini.

And you have full export capabilities through FBX (okay, not the best solution), but you may send it to Modo and render there, for example.

Well i read Houdini forums and there are a lot of basic stuff we take for granted and should have been mature by now that doesn't happen in Houdini.
They still have basic problems like selecting components.

Edit: what makes me backoff from Houdini is that i don't see them interested in ease of use.

MauricioPC wrote:
And you have full export capabilities through FBX (okay, not the best solution), but you may send it to Modo and render there, for example.

Much better than FBX is that you have Alembic also.

MauricioPC wrote:I've just downloaded the apprentice version to see if I finally learn this darn thing.

Don't give up! It's taken me a while and I almost stopped a few times but I'm finally starting to feel at home with Houdini.

angus_davidson wrote:I agree with Sam on this one. Its going to get much harder to get a perpetual licence of anything.

Oh, I agree with Sam also. It's getting exceedingly difficult to get software that sports a perpetual license. That said: I will NOT rent my software and will rather "retire" than give in to that way of doing business. Matter of principle and all that jazz...

SamHowell wrote:Don't give up! It's taken me a while and I almost stopped a few times but I'm finally starting to feel at home with Houdini.

Same goes for Maya, as it turns out...