Software Alternatives, Accelerators & Startups

Houdini VS Cycles Renderer

Compare Houdini VS Cycles Renderer and see what are their differences

Houdini logo Houdini

Houdini covers all the major areas of 3D production, including:

Cycles Renderer logo Cycles Renderer

Cycles is Blender’s ray-trace based production render engine and in development since 2011.
  • Houdini Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-05-09
  • Cycles Renderer Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-04-27

Houdini videos

What is Houdini Used For?

More videos:

  • Review - Top 5 Reasons To Learn Houdini Today!
  • Review - Ultra Running Vlog: Patagonia Houdini shell review

Cycles Renderer videos

blender cycles renderer

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Houdini and Cycles Renderer)
3D
47 47%
53% 53
3D Modeling
100 100%
0% 0
Game Development
37 37%
63% 63
3D Rendering
0 0%
100% 100

User comments

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Reviews

These are some of the external sources and on-site user reviews we've used to compare Houdini and Cycles Renderer

Houdini Reviews

15 Best Maya Alternatives
3D Modeling and Rendering with Houdini isn’t very different from what you get on Maya. However, Houdini follows a node-based workflow. Every action in Houdini is a node and these nodes are linked together to form networks.

Cycles Renderer Reviews

We have no reviews of Cycles Renderer yet.
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Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, Houdini seems to be more popular. It has been mentiond 4 times since March 2021. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

Houdini mentions (4)

  • Book or courses recomendations?
    Otherwise, Unity (3D) has tutorials for Unity, Houdini (vfx) has tutorials on their site (sidefx.com). Blender (3D) has a good community on reddit. For 2D animation the book "The Animator’s Survival Kit" is a common book people read in this reddit. Also lots of youtube tutorials. Search for whatever you want to learn ("how to paint grass in photoshop", "how to use animation in Blender", "how to animate... Source: over 1 year ago
  • Coming from Cinema4D + octane
    Houdini is (a little) hard to learn, so the best you can do is focus on one area at the same time: Modeling, Vellum, Fluids, Particles, KineFx ... You can find a lot of free tutorials on sidefx.com. Source: almost 2 years ago
  • Newbie question: Which software would I use to create the interactive, animated 3D model project I have in mind?
    It sounds like you would need a lot of procedural geometry, which is done best with Houdini. But it does not do interactive web. Source: about 2 years ago
  • Unable to Start Houdini - License Server Issue?
    I also checked my license status from sidefx.com and it said everything was correct, but of course now I cant even login to the website and it just throws me a 500 Error Code when I login, asking me to login again. Ive emailed support but figured I might check here too while I'm at it. Source: about 3 years ago

Cycles Renderer mentions (0)

We have not tracked any mentions of Cycles Renderer yet. Tracking of Cycles Renderer recommendations started around Mar 2021.

What are some alternatives?

When comparing Houdini and Cycles Renderer, you can also consider the following products

Blender - Blender is the open source, cross platform suite of tools for 3D creation.

RenderMan - Advanced Technology from Pixar Animation Studios for Rendering VFX and Animation

Cinema 4D - Cinema 4D is a 3D modeling, animation, motion graphics and rendering application.

V-Ray - Learn why V-Ray for 3ds Max’s powerful CPU & GPU renderer is the industry standard for artists & designers in architecture, games, VFX, VR, and more.

Autodesk 3DS Max - 3ds Max is software for 3D modeling, animation, rendering, and visualization. Create stunning game enrivonments, design visualizations, and virtual reality experiences.

LuxCoreRender - LuxCoreRender is a physically based and unbiased rendering engine.