SideFX announces v2.0 of Substance in Houdini
SideFX’s presentation on new features inside the Houdini Game Development Toolset from Siggraph 2019. The upcoming Substance in Houdini 2.0 plugin is covered at 22:05 in the video.
SideFX has announced version 2.0 of Substance in Houdini, an updated version of the free plugin adding support for Adobe’s Substance procedural file format within Houdini.
The new plugin, which is being developed in partnership with Adobe, was announced at Siggraph 2019, alongside a new integration for Gaea, QuadSpinner’s terrain design software.
New plugin will make it possible to process Substance heightmaps as well as material data in Houdini
Houdini already has a Substance integration plugin, making it possible to edit .sbsar files generated in Substance Designer directly inside Houdini.
However, version 1.0 of the plugin, released in 2016, was based on Houdini’s old system of SHOPs (SHader OPerators), which were superseded in Houdini 16 the following year.
The new implementation is based on COPs, Houdini’s compositing nodes, also used for manipulating other pixel-based data such as depth and displacement maps.
That means that as well as processing material data, the new plugin will be able to import heightmaps generated in Substance Designer and apply them to meshes inside Houdini.
It will also be possible to send Houdini data back to Substance Designer.
In his Siggraph talk, SideFX senior technical artist Luiz Kruel said that the new plugin was intended to enable artists to bake maps using Houdini’s tools, process the results in Substance tools, then load the results back into a Houdini material, without ever having to write files to disk.
Availability and system requirements
Version 2.0 Substance in Houdini is due to ship before the release of Houdini 18.0 – which, if SideFX sticks to its current release schedule, should be some time this fall. It hasn’t announced system requirements yet.
The plugin will be released as part of the free Houdini Game Development Toolset.
See more of SideFX’s presentations from Siggraph 2019 on the company’s website