Side Effects releases Houdini Engine Indie free

Side Effects Software’s Houdini GDC reel. The company announced at the conference that Houdini Engine Indie, targeted at indie game developers, and previously a rental-only product, is now available free.

Side Effects Software has released Houdini Engine Indie for free. The software, which previously cost $99/year, enables users to load procedural content created in Houdini in other DCC tools.

The announcement was made at GDC 2016.

Load and edit Houdini content in Unity, UE4, Maya, Cinema 4D and 3ds Max
First released in 2014, Houdini Engine Indie is a cut-down version of Side Effects’ Houdini Engine targeted at indie game developers and animation studios.

The software enables users of other DCC apps to load procedural content created in Houdini – in this case, readymade assets from the Unity Asset Store or Orbolt Smart 3D Asset Store.

The Houdini Digital Assets remain editable when loaded into their new host apps, which include Unity, Unreal Engine 4, Maya, Cinema 4D and 3ds Max.

While Houdini Engine can also load custom content created by other Houdini users within a studio, the Indie licence prevents it from being used in the same pipeline as commercial version of Houdini.

Availability
Houdini Engine Indie is available as a free download for Windows, Linux and Mac OS X. The plugins linking the engine to its host apps are also free downloads.

There is a limit of three licenses per studio, and to qualify, devs must make less than USD $100,000/year.

Read Side Effects Software’s official news announcement

Download Houdini Engine Indie for free (Registration required)