Nearing the end of last year, SideFX software released Houdini Engine, which brings procedurally based modeling to Unreal and Unity. Previously the Indie version had a $99 price tag. Now however, that price tag has been removed.
From the announcement:
SideFX is pleased to announce that Houdini Engine Indie is now available for free (previously $99). Independent game devs and CG artists can now freely load Houdini Digital Assets built using Houdini’s procedural node-based workflow into apps such as Unity, UE4, Maya and Cinema4D.
“This is exciting news for indie developers who want to enhance the procedural features in Unreal Engine 4,” said Epic Games CTO Kim Libreri. “Houdini Engine Indie brings amazing power to the table which makes it possible for smaller teams to more easily achieve AAA-quality results.”
Houdini Engine Indie works with all of the Houdini Engine plug-ins including Unity, UE4, Autodesk Maya, Cinema 4D and Autodesk 3DS Max. These plug-ins let game devs load Houdini Digital Assets which can be created in Houdini Indie or downloaded from the Unity Asset Store and the Orbolt 3D Smart Asset store.
There is one major limitation on the indie edition of Houdini Engine, namely you must make less than $100K USD a year and is limited to 3 licenses per organization. You can see Houdini Engine in action in Unreal Engine in the video below:
Houdini Engine for UE4 from Go Procedural on Vimeo.