Houdini 20.0 Released
sidefx.com
sidefx.com
As an indie developer that makes it tricky to get into because learning it takes up so much of your overall available time slice.
However I also think that as long as you have some access to someone who knows Houdini well to unblock you when you get stuck on things (SESI support are actually very good for this!), and you're willing to stick with the learning even when it gets hard (there's a solution to many-a-problem that indie's might face available in Houdini.. and a platform to build further such solutions too - quite the carrot!). The return on investment-of-time can be very good indeed in my opinion.
Of course I do appreciate that for smaller projects there simply isn't any time available, at-all period! But I'd say it'd still be worth trying to shave some time off for this, especially if the will to make it work is there, and of course if you can get a license! (Indie lics are available and pretty cost-effective for what they can do though!).
I'd have liked some options like FBX exporting to have been included in the free option, for example to see if I can export their new cloud volumes to something I can use in Unity. But there is the monthly payment plan which is quite reasonable for experimentation if you don't want to pay the once off fee.