SideFX ships Houdini Reality Capture plugin as free beta

SideFX has released its Reality Capture plugin for Houdini as a free open beta.

The plugin enables artists to use Capturing Reality’s popular RealityCapture photogrammetry toolset directly inside Houdini, without the need to have the standalone edition of the software installed locally.

Generate textured 3D models from source images directly inside Houdini
SideFX describes the Reality Capture plugin as “not [being] designed to be a complete replacement of every feature in RC, but the ones that fit well in a Houdini pipeline”.

The software provides five new node types within Houdini, enabling users to import and align source image of a real-world 3D object, and generate a textured 3D model and camera positions from them.

It can also process LIDAR data in E57 format, providing you convert it to .lsp files using the standalone version of RealityCapture first. SideFX is working on direct support for E57 files.

You can find more detailed documentation via the link at the foot of the story.

Pricing and availability
The Houdini Reality Capture plugin is available as a free open beta. It is compatible with Houdini 16.5 on Windows only.

To use it, you’ll need a valid RealityCapture software licence for a version other than the Steam edition. Prices start at €99 (around $115) for a three-month RealityCapture Promo licence.

Read more about the new Reality Capture plugin for Houdini on SideFX’s blog