Comment by DethNinja | Hacker News Reader

Comment by DethNinja | Hacker News Reader

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I do indie game development, Houdini extremely speeds up game development process by combining python programming, procedural generation, and conventional 3D asset modelling into one single software package.

It must’ve increased my productivity at least 5x fold, and it costed around 250 USD, which is really cheap compared to other 3D software packages.

Basically I just use Houdini to do everything from terrain generation, static mesh modelling, rigging/animation to VFX. It doesn’t have good sculpting capabilities, so zbrush is needed for organic character modelling.

Most amazing thing about Houdini is that it let’s you basically code entire asset generation and baking process via python.

I’m 100% sure Houdini will take over entire gaming industry, I doubt conventional modelling software like Maya or 3D Max will be utilised in new game studios, though older ones will still use them due to initial investments they made.

Hi! Thanks for your thoughts, they are really interesting. Do you have any examples of your Houdini to game content or could you recommend any good learning resources for using Houdini in this way?

I've been sharpening my blender skills for content creation and while I enjoy it, it's quite slow.

Game I’m making is still under wraps but for example: I got multiple building, door, control terminal, and signature variants all developed in Houdini. Doors have to open whenever a player within guest list comes near the door. Assume there are 100s of combinations you can make with these variants. I can just select the variants I want in Houdini, combine them within Houdini, click to a button I programmed in python that says bake and it will output a nice TOML file that automatically gets read by UE4 and I can just drop a blueprint that already exists within UE4 to world space and I’ll have my combined building show up on the planet literally immediately.

Honestly Houdini is so complicated it will probably take you three months to get to basic proficiency and you will need to learn python if needed. I mostly used YouTube tutorials and documentation itself.

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