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Houdini Engine for Maya

Houdini Engine for Maya is a Maya plug-in that allows deep integration of Houdini technology into Autodesk Maya through the use of Houdini Engine.

This plug-in brings Houdini's powerful and flexible procedural workflow into Maya through Houdini Digital Assets. Artists can interactively adjust the asset's parameters inside Maya, and use Maya geometries as an asset's inputs. Houdini's procedural engine will then "cook" the asset and the results will be available right inside Maya.

The easiest way for artists to access the plug-in is to download the latest production build of Houdini or the FREE Houdini Apprentice Learning Edition and install the Maya plug-in along with the Houdini interactive software. Houdini Digital Assets created in either Houdini or Apprentice can then be loaded into Maya through the plug-in. A growing library of Digital Assets for use in Maya will be available at the Orbolt Smart 3D Asset Store.

For more information:

For support and reporting bugs:

Supported Maya versions

Currently, the supported Maya versions are:

  • 2025
  • 2024
  • 2023
  • 2022
  • 2020
  • 2019
  • 2018
  • 2017
  • 2016.5
  • 2016
  • 2015
  • 2014

The plug-in is supported on Linux, Windows, and Mac OS X.

Compiling with CMake

The Maya plugin uses CMake to compile on all platforms.

To get started:

  • Fork this repository to your own Github account using the Fork button at the top.
  • Clone the forked repository onto your system.

In order to compile and run the plug-in, both Houdini and Maya have to be installed. Houdini needs to be installed because the plug-in uses the Houdini Engine API, which is currently distributed together with Houdini. Since the Houdini Engine API could change between daily builds, the plug-in also needs to be compiled with a matching Houdini version. For now, always download and install the latest available daily build from www.sidefx.com

The main CMake variables for configuration are:

  • CMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX - Specifies the destination directory to create the module directory and files.
  • HoudiniEngine_ROOT - Specifies the directory of the Houdini installation. (e.g. $HFS)
  • Maya_ROOT - Specifies the directory of the Maya installation. (e.g. $MAYA_LOCATION)
  • MAYA_VERSION - Specifies the Maya version to compile for. (e.g. 2018, 2017, 2016.5, 2016,...).

The CMake install step will create a module directory and file.

For example, on Linux:

cd ~/HoudiniEngineForMaya
mkdir build-maya2018
cd build-maya2018
cmake \
          -DHoudiniEngine_ROOT=/opt/hfs16.0.633 \
          -DMaya_ROOT=/usr/autodesk/maya2018 \
          -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=../install-maya2018 \
          -DMAYA_VERSION=2018 \
          ..
make && make install

UI-dependent DSOs

The Maya plug-in disables certain Houdini DSOs by setting the HOUDINI_DSO_EXCLUDE_PATTERN environment variable (see CMakeLists.txt). These Houdini DSOs depend on Houdini's UI libraries, namely:

  • HoudiniUI
  • HoudiniAPPS1
  • HoudiniAPPS2
  • HoudiniAPPS3

These Houdini UI libraries use Qt, and thus conflict with Maya's Qt libraries. These Houdini DSOs are excluded to avoid pulling in the Houdini's UI dependencies.

This same mechanism can be used to exclude your own UI-dependent DSO plugins.

This should only be an issue when using the in-process backend. If the backend is loaded with out-of-process backends (named pipe or socket), then it should be possible to load the UI-dependent DSOs, and load in the UI libraries.

The backend can be set through the Houdini Engine's preferences in Maya. The following MEL command could also be used to change the preference before loading the Maya plug-in: optionVar -iv "houdiniEngineSessionType" 2 -iv "houdiniEngineSessionPipeCustom" 0;