Download free Houdini tools from Project Titan
Originally posted on 10 February 2022. Scroll down for news of the new free Project Titan tools.
SideFX has begun releasing the custom Houdini tools it developed for Project Titan, its in-house tech demo intended to test workflows for building 3D environments inside Unreal Engine 5 from procedural 3D content.
The tools generate environment assets like buildings, scaffolding and vegetation as procedural Houdini assets, which can then be imported into the game engine via the Houdini Engine for Unreal Engine 5 plugin.
The first tool from the project, the Cable Tool, is now available for download, alongside the alpha build of the Unreal Engine 5 plugin.
Project Titan: building next-gen game environments in UE5 with procedural Houdini content
Unveiled last month, Project Titan is SideFX’s new in-house tech demo designed to test procedural workflows for creating 3D environment content inside Houdini that can then be used in Unreal Engine 5.
To populate the videogame-style environment – a noctural, neon-lit industrial scene – SideFX used stock geometry from kitbashing asset library KitBash3D, along with 19 custom procedural tools.
The tools generate procedural 3D assets like buildings, billboards, fences, cables and scaffolding that can be further dressed with procedural cloth or vegetation.
The resulting Houdini Digital Assets can then be imported into and edited inside the game engine using SideFX’s Houdini Engine integration plugin for Unreal Engine 5.
Download the custom Houdini tools from Project Titan, beginning with the Cable Tool
SideFX has now begun releasing those custom tools, along with multi-part video tutorials explaining how they were created, with accompanying Houdini project files.
The first to be made available publicly is the Cable Tool, which can be used to create twisting bundles of cables, as shown in the video above.
More of the Project Titan tools will be released via the Tutorials section of SideFX’s website in future.
Updated 7 April 2022: SideFX has released five more custom tools from Project Titan, including one to generate ivy procedurally across an underlying structure, and one to generate shrubs.
Other tools pack assets to fill a predefined volume – for example, to create stacks of crates – add cloth to a scene, and even generate an entire auto-rigged train.
In addition, SideFX has officially released the Houdini Engine plugin for Unreal Engine 5, following the release of the stable version of Unreal Engine 5 earlier this week.
Updated 3 June 2022: SideFX has released five more custom tools from Project Titan, including a rather neat Building Tool, which lets users place boxes in UE5 and have the converted into custom 3D buildings.
There are also tools for creating fences, train tracks and platforms, and Tree Pivot Painter, for adding wind animation to 3D trees.
Pricing and system requirements
The Project Titan tools are available free as Houdini .hip files and/or .hda files that can be imported and edited in DCC tools compatible with Houdini Engine, including 3ds Max, Maya, Unity and Unreal Engine.
To use the .hda files inside Unreal Engine 5, you will need the Houdini Engine for Unreal Engine 5 plugin. It is included in the installer for the current daily build of Houdini.
Houdini and Houdini Engine are both commercial products: you can find current pricing here.
Download SideFX’s Project Titan tools from the Tutorials section of its website
Download the Houdini Engine for Unreal Engine 5 plugin as part of the Houdini installer