Export to Sketchfab Directly from Houdini

Within the world of computer graphics, Houdini is well known as a visual effects solution for blockbuster films. At the same time, it is now being used by more and more game studios to create game art and run time effects. Houdini’s procedural nature is controlled using an artist-friendly node-based workflow that makes it easy to create multiple iterations of an idea or make changes even deep into production.

Lately, SideFX has been putting a lot of work into its modeling tools and has taken things one step further: there is now a tool available for exporting directly to Sketchfab

To start exporting, you can add the Sketchfab exporter node using the Game Development Tool Shelf. The Game Development Toolset is a set of bonus tools for Houdini that can be downloaded from within Houdini 16.5.

https://sketchfab.com/models/a9abd1d9537c44db8a2837c051dc3bfb

You can see more of Akira’s excellent procedural Houdini models including the one in the blog header image on his Sketchfab profile.

To access this tool, go to the Games Development Shelf (you might need to add this to your shelf sets) and click on the Update Toolset button. This will pop up a dialog prompting you with which branch to download and which release.

Once your toolset is updated, you can go to the geometry level of your model and press TAB > Sketchfab to place an exporter node. Note that the exporter is currently limited to static meshes.

The Sketchfab SOP in context

We can’t wait to see what you’ll create. All work uploaded directly from Houdini will be tagged as such and listed on our official Houdini tag page. We’ll be keeping a close eye on all of the models being uploaded and look forward to seeing what the community creates using Houdini.