Wednesday, April 23rd, 2014 Posted by Jim Thacker

Side Effects announces Houdini Engine pricing

Side Effects Software has announced commercial pricing for the Houdini Engine, a summer release date for its Maya plugin, and an upcoming Cinema 4D plugin, due for release before the end of the year.

The news was announced to coincide with this week’s FMX 2014 conference.

Release dates for the plugins
Side Effects first announced Houdini Engine last year, along with its own plugins for Maya and Unity.

The Houdini Engine API extracts Houdini’s core technologies into an form that other developers can integrate into their own tools, effectively turning the software into “the world’s most powerful plugin” for other DCC apps.

Houdini artists can create content within the software, then export it as a Houdini Digital Asset. The asset can then be imported into another DCC package via one of the plugins, where it remains fully editable.

The Maya plugin is now scheduled to enter open beta on 1 May, with a full release to follow in mid July.

The Unity plugin remains in testing, with more news scheduled when Unity 5 ships later this year.

The Cinema 4D plugin, which is being developed in partnership with Maxon, has only just been announced, and is due to ship before the end of the year. You can find more details here. All three plugins will be free.

Pricing for Houdini Engine
The thing you will have to pay for is the Houdini Engine itself: a licence for which is required to interact with content created in Houdini inside another host application.

As is increasingly the case in the industry, it’s rental-only: a node-locked licence costs $495 per year, while floating licences start at $795 per year. Users of Houdini and Houdini FX can use their existing licence keys.

A single Engine licence can be used with multiple host applications, and is only required when a Houdini Digital Asset is actually open in another application.

The new Houdini Engine licence will also replace the existing Houdini Batch licence, so that it can run batch processes on a renderfarm.

Read the official announcement on Side Effects Software’s website

Read the FAQs about Houdini Engine and the three plugins on Side Effects’ website

Download the source code of the Maya and Unity plugins on GitHub