Thu 7th Aug 2014 | News
Side Effects Software, an industry leader in 3D animation and visual effects software, is proud to announce the immediate release of Houdini Indie which 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.
“Independent animators and game creators are the lifeblood of the entertainment industry” says Kim Davidson, President and CEO, Side Effects Software. “With Houdini Indie, they now have access to a comprehensive set of procedural tools and assets to help them experiment, innovate, and create!”
Independent artists can use Houdini Indie to create animations, effects or game art. Houdini Indie includes the same procedural node-based workflow and features as the commercial version of Houdini and the physically-based Mantra renderer. Houdini Indie can be used in all stages of animation and game production including procedural modelling, character animation, lighting, rendering, effects and compositing. Houdini Indie also gives artists render farm access using HQueue on Amazon’s EC2 compute cloud.
“Houdini Indie is a perfect solution for independent animators and game artists” says Chris Romano, Writer and Director, MONSTRO! “Houdini empowered my team to rig, animate, light, render and add effects such as hair, cloth, water and smoke with off-the-shelf tools. No special wizardy. No battery of programmers. This let me focus on story and style.”
Houdini Indie with “V-REX” Orbolt Asset by Fabio D’amico
Houdini Engine Indie
Houdini Indie, and the standalone Houdini Engine Indie, can be used to load Houdini Digital Assets into other content creation apps such as Maya®, Cinema4D, and 3DS Max®, or game editors such as Unity® and Unreal.® Houdini Digital Assets can be accessed from the Orbolt Smart 3D Asset store or created in Houdini Indie for sharing with other artists.
Houdini Engine Indie working inside Maya
Pricing and Availability
Houdini Indie is available today for $199 USD annually while Houdini Engine Indie is available for $99 USD annually. Houdini Indie replaces Houdini Apprentice HD which was only available for non-commercial projects. Houdini Indie will recognize Apprentice HD licenses and can be used under the limited commercial license for the remainder of the annual term. The free Houdini Apprentice license is still available for non-commercial use by students.
Commercial use of Houdini Indie is limited to studios or artists that make less than $100K USD per year and cannot be used in the same pipeline as commercial versions of Houdini. Houdini Indie uses its own file format for saving scenes and assets and is restricted to 1920×1080 when rendering out animations using Mantra. Houdini Indie also includes FBX input and output and ALEMBIC input and output.
