This probably also explains why the Side Effects Software party at Siggraph 2012 had serpentine queues and the biggest rush amongst all the parties 🙂
Side Effects Software, an industry leader in 3D animation and visual effects software, is proud to announce new prices for Houdini designed to facilitate growth within the Houdini global community, simplified branding for the two Houdini workstation products and integration with the Orbolt™ Smart Asset Store to give Houdini artists access to the combined knowledge of the whole community.
“After our most successful year ever, we wanted to find new ways to make Houdini more accessible to more artists,” says Kim Davidson, President and CEO. “With Houdini taking hold throughout the industry, it is the perfect time to lower prices and introduce a smart asset store.”
To keep the focus on the Houdini brand and better describe the roles each product plays, Side Effects has rebranded its two workstation products as Houdini and Houdini FX. Houdini FX, formerly known as Houdini Master, includes all Houdini features with a focus on particles, fluids, Pyro FX, cloth, wire and rigid body dynamics. Houdini, formerly known as Houdini Escape, has become a popular choice for many studios with its comprehensive set of procedural modeling, rendering, and animation tools and its ability to open up and render scenes and assets created in Houdini FX.
With the new version, Houdini FX is now available for $4,495 while Houdini will remain priced at $1,995. For further savings, customers will now receive their first year on the Annual Upgrade Plan for free. This creates savings of ups to 30% for Houdini and up to 50% for Houdini FX. These amazing new prices make Houdini much more affordable for both small studios using it for the first time and for large studios scaling up for new projects.
“Houdini 12 has proven itself as an essential tool for our VFX artists. It is great to see Side Effects lowering prices so competitively,” says Gavin Graham, Co-Head of 3D, Double Negative Visual Effects. “These new prices will make it so much easier for us to scale up to meet production requirements, and competition for the always-in-use Houdini FX licenses will be a thing of the past!”
At SIGGRAPH, Side Effects is releasing Houdini 12.1 which is the first version to integrate the Orbolt™ Smart Asset Store where members of the global Houdini community combine their knowledge and expertise to create customizable 3D assets. Being launched in beta, the Orbolt store offers assets which are thoroughly reviewed and tested before being offered for sale. The assets will work with both Houdini and Houdini FX and will provide production-ready solutions for VFX artists facing tight deadlines and rising costs. For more information, visitwww.orbolt.com.
Other features in Houdini 12.1 include the ability to create edge groups, a feature long coveted by Houdini artists, along with optimizations to FLIP fluids, Mantra rendering and Pyro FX. Houdini 12.1 is available immediately for download at www.sidefx.com.