Requirements & Installation

Requirements

Before you start, make sure you have:

Houdini 21.0 or newer. The tool uses features introduced in Houdini 21 and isn't compatible with earlier versions.
Houdini Indie, Core, or FX. The tool ships as a limited-commercial (Indie) Houdini Digital Asset. See the license note below.
Windows. The tool was developed and tested on Windows. It may work on macOS or Linux, but those platforms are untested — use them at your own risk.
A Character Creator / iClone character, exported as FBX. Designed for Character Creator 5 / iClone 8, and should work with all CC3+ base meshes. See Preparing Your Character.
Karma for rendering (included with Houdini). The materials are tuned for Karma XPU and also render in Karma CPU.

About the Indie license format

This asset is a black-boxed, limited-commercial Digital Asset (.hdalc). It works in Houdini Indie, and it can also be loaded in Houdini Core/FX — but doing so will temporarily switch that session into limited-commercial mode, per SideFX's licensing rules. If you work in a commercial studio pipeline, be aware of this before using the tool. You are responsible for your own compliance with SideFX licensing.

Installation

Installing the tool is just a matter of putting one file where Houdini can find it.

Houdini automatically loads Digital Assets from an otls folder in your user preferences directory. On Windows, that's typically:

C:\Users\<YourName>\Documents\houdini21.0\otls\

If the otls folder doesn't exist yet, create it.

Copy the downloaded .hdalc file (for example, JV-Reallusion_Importer-v1.2.hdalc) into that otls folder.

If Houdini was already running, restart it so it picks up the new asset. That's it — the tool is now installed.

To confirm it loaded:

Create a Geometry object (or dive into an existing one).
Press Tab to open the node menu and type Reallusion.
You should see Reallusion Importer in the list.

If it appears, you're ready to go. Head to the Quick Start.

Alternative: load without installing

If you'd rather not install it permanently, you can load the asset for a single session:

Go to Assets ▸ Install Digital Asset Library in the main menu.
Browse to the .hdalc file and select it.

The node will be available until you close Houdini. To make it permanent, use the otls folder method above.

Updating

When a new version is released, copy the new .hdalc into your otls folder, delete the previous version's file (the filename carries the version, e.g. JV-Reallusion_Importer-v1.2.hdalc), and restart Houdini. Your existing scenes will pick up the new version automatically — no scene changes needed.

Because the tool stores all your look settings on a controller node inside your scene (not inside the asset), updating the asset won't lose your dialed-in looks on existing characters.