Getting Started with Houdini Engine: What is the Houdini Engine?

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The Houdini Engine is a powerful new technology created by Side Effects Software, that allows Cinema 4D users to load Houdini Digital Assets inside C4D and leverage Houdini’s procedural and powerful tools, to enhance your workflow.

The Houdini Engine is a powerful new technology created by Side Effects Software, that allows Cinema 4D users to load Houdini Digital Assets inside C4D and leverage Houdini’s procedural and powerful tools, to enhance your workflow.

Watch this brief introduction video to get a general idea of what it is, how it works and what to expect from it.

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Transcript

- Houdini is a digital content creation application developed by Side Effects, and the Houdini Engine is a special version of Houdini that runs in the background without an interface and allows you to load Houdini digital assets inside Cinema 4D and use them just like regular Cinema 4D objects. Think of it as a very specialized plugin that allows you to load Houdini files inside Cinema 4D. To get a slightly better idea of the flow of data inside Cinema 4D with the Houdini integration, I have created a simple graph to illustrate it. Let's imagine the simplest possible scene that has one Cinema 4D object and one Houdini digital asset. Once a scene update has been initiated, either by changing a parameter or by playing the animation, Cinema 4D treats the native object as usual and performs any relevant calculations. On the other hand, the Houdini digital asset is sent to the Houdini Engine first, which performs its own calculations and returns the output to Cinema 4D. The two objects are then returned to the scene and the scene is updated with the new object states. This may not be a technically accurate description, but gives you a general idea, nevertheless. One thing to remember is that although the integration of the Houdini Engine inside Cinema 4D is very powerful, there are certain boundaries you should use it within, as the architecture of the two programs is very different. To educate yourselves better, feel free to go to Side Effects' website, SideFX.com, and read about the Houdini Engine in more detail.
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