Side Effects Software: New names, new prices

Side Effects Software announced new prices for Houdini, its flagship 3D modeling, animation, and rendering software, 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. 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 US while Houdini will remain priced at $1,995 US. 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. At SIGGRAPH, Side Effects is also releasing Houdini 12.1 which is the first version to integrate the Orbolt Smart Asset Store, the ability to create edge groups, along with optimizations to FLIP fluids, Mantra rendering and Pyro FX. [source]