Tuesday, December 8th, 2015 Posted by Jim Thacker

Side Effects ships Houdini Engine for UE4

Side Effects Software has officially released Houdini Engine for UE4, its plugin enabling games artists to load and edit procedural content created in Houdini inside Unreal Engine 4.

The plugin provides a bridge between Unreal Engine 4 and Houdini Engine itself.

Houdini artists can create content within the software, then export it as a Houdini Digital Asset. Through Houdini Engine, the asset can then be imported into a host application, where it remains fully editable.

Make use of the new game tools in Houdini 15
Houdini Engine for UE4 came out in beta in April, so all that’s really new is that it’s now an official release.

However, one collateral benefit is that many of the tools introduced in Houdini 15, released since the start of that beta period, are relevant to games artists.

As well as making modelling workflow more familiar to users of other 3D tools, the update introduced viewport support for UDIM textures, world-space normal maps, UV mesh boundaries and overlapping UV regions.

Game artists can also import and export tangent-space normal maps and convert bump and displacement maps to normal maps.

“All of the modeling and texturing improvements in Houdini 15 have been developed with game artists in mind,” said Judith Crow, director of Side Effects’ Games Segment.

Pricing and availability
Houdini Engine for UE4 is avaiable now as part of the installers for Houdini and Houdini Indie.

Houdini costs $1,995 for the base edition, or $4,995 for Houdini FX, which adds the simulation and dynamics toolsets. Houdini Engine is available on a rental-only basis from $499/year.

In addition, rental-only Indie licences of both products are available to artists and studios making under $100,000 per year. Houdini Indie costs $199/year and Houdini Engine Indie costs $99/year.

Read more about Houdini Engine for UE4 on Side Effects Software’s website
(Includes video tutorials and a downloadable sample game level)