Howdy guys! Indie-Pixel here and I wanted to give you my Top 5 Houdini GDC 2019 Game Dev talks! There where some pretty cool presentations done at the Houdini Hive this year and I was also fortunate enough to be given the opportunity to present my own work around PDG.
One of the things I liked most about this year is to see more of the Houdini Engine being incorporated into game pipeline's as well as the launch of PDG! There where also some cool new Additions to the Game Dev Tool set which I will talk briefly about here in this post.
#1 - Simplifying Indie GameDev Workflows | Luis Garcia | GDC 2019
But first lets talk about number one on the list! Since I am a huge fan of the Houdini Engine, I thought that Luis Garcia's talk on Simplifying Indie Game Dev was a great talk! I really liked to see how others are using the Houdini Engine and all the different approaches. Watch the following Video for the complete presentation by Luis Garcia!
#2 - H17.5 GameDev Tools Update | Mike Lyndon | GDC 2019
The next presentation I thought was just awesome was Mike Lyndon's talk on all the new nodes and features that come with the Game Dev Toolset! I mean they added a Building Generator to the Shelf! I have yet to give it a full run through, but finally we have a built in Building Generator, and their Road map stated they were going to make a new Street Generator tool! These will realy take our Houdini Engine work to the next level. Anyways, take a look and see for yourself! :-)
#3 - Procedural Race Tracks for Mobile Games | Stoyan Dimitrov | GDC 2019
The presentation on Procedural Race tracks was simply great in terms of levarging the Houdini Engine API with your own custom handles inside of Unity 3D. I find this to be the more advanced way to work with the Houdini Engine and does warrant a new course on using the Houdini Engine. Anyways, I highly recommend watching this talk to see how Space Apes Games created their own curve tools that they fed into a Houdini Engine Race Track Creator.
#4 - Marvel’s Spider-Man, meet Houdini | David Santiago | GDC 2019
This was a great presentation about how they put together the city in the latest Spiderman game. It is very thorough and gives a ton of great insights as to put together a city using Houdini and artist driven curves and images.
#5 - Rapid Level Creation for Unity Mobile | Paul Ambrosiussen | GDC 2019
Pauls talk on a procedural system using the new Photoshop node in Houdini Engine was really cool! He also showed off a ton of the other new nodes available in the Game Dev Toolset. Nodes like the Dirt Skirt and the Snow buildup will really help you out and I highly recommend taking a look! So take a look at Pauls presentation for some really cool ways to work with the Houdini Engine!
So that's my list in terms of of the Houdini Hive presentations! I also highly recommend the PDG talks I gave as PDG will really change the way we do things with the Houdini Engine! So that's all for now! Thanks so much! :-)
Kenny Lammers
Indie-Pixel