Houdini Engine - Getting Started

Welcome to the Houdini Engine Sample Application.

This app is intended for studios to use as reference and inspiration when writing Houdini integrations for their own DCC application or game engine. Over time we hope to update the project with code samples to handle use cases such as working with multiparms, heightfields, leveraging PDG and more.

Documentation

Please visit our Houdini Engine Documentation for information on how to maintain and extend the sample code provided to build your own Houdini Engine integration.

Prerequisites

The HoudiniEngineSample is built using CMake which can be downloaded and installed from here: https://cmake.org/download/ (minimum required version is 3.1).

Building the Sample

Initialize your envirornment by navigating to your Houdini installation directory and sourcing the houdini_setup script.

# Mac:
cd /Applications/Houdini/Houdinix.x.x/Frameworks/Houdini.framework/Resources
source houdini_setup

# Linux:
cd /opt/hfsx.x.x
source houdini_setup

# Windows:
cd "C:\\Program Files\\Side Effects Software\\Houdini x.x.x"
source houdini_setup

Alternatively, if you prefer working in the Command Prompt or Windows Powershell launch the Houdini command-line tools found here:
"C:\Program Files\Side Effects Software\Houdini x.x.x\bin\hcmd.exe"

Using the same terminal session, navigate to a directory with write permissions and fetch a copy of the HoudiniEngineSample project to build.

git clone https://github.com/sideeffects/HoudiniEngineSample.git
cd HoudiniEngineSample

mkdir build
cd build
cmake ..
cmake --build . --target install

This will place an executable named HoudiniEngineSample.exe in the project's /bin folder.

Project Structure

• HoudiniEngineManager - How to start/cleanup sessions, load HDAs and query parameters & attributes
• HoudiniEngineGeometry - How to marshal geometry in and out of Houdini
• HoudiniEngineUtility - Utility functions for string conversion, fetching errors etc.
• HoudiniEnginePlatform - Contains OS-specific code for loading the libHAPIL library
• HoudiniApi - This file is generated (do not modify directly). Initializes the HAPI API with functions exported from libHAPIL.
• HDA/hexagona_lite.hda - Sample HDA for generating hexagonal terrain (provided by @christosstavridis)

Version Compatibility

The HoudiniEngineSample application is compatible with HAPI version 6.2. For more details please see: https://www.sidefx.com/docs/hengine/_h_a_p_i__migration.html

HoudiniEngineSample for Python

In /Python you can find the sample application implemented using the hapi package, the Python wrapping of the Houdini Engine C API. Launch it using Hython, the Python shell that ships with Houdini.

1. Initialize your environment following the steps in Building the Sample.

2. In the same terminal session, navigate to a directory with write permissions and fetch a copy of the HoudiniEngineSample project:

git clone https://github.com/sideeffects/HoudiniEngineSample.git

cd HoudiniEngineSample/Python
hython he_sample.py

See https://www.sidefx.com/docs/houdini/hapi/ for documentation and getting started resources.

More Resources

• Houdini Engine for Unreal: https://github.com/sideeffects/HoudiniEngineForUnreal
• Houdini Engine for Unity: https://github.com/sideeffects/HoudiniEngineForUnity
• Houdini Engine for 3dsMax: https://github.com/sideeffects/HoudiniEngineFor3dsMax
• Houdini Engine for Maya: https://github.com/sideeffects/HoudiniEngineForMaya