Autodesk open sources Golaem plugins for Houdini and Unreal Engine

On 3 August 2026 Autodesk announced that its Golaem crowd‑simulation integration add‑ons for Houdini, Unreal Engine and Universal Scene Description (USD) are now available as open‑source projects under the Apache 2.0 licence. The repositories contain build files and instructions so studios can compile the plugins themselves, enabling procedural loading of Golaem simulation caches directly in Houdini or Unreal without baking geometry, while crowd authoring remains in Maya.

The release coincides with the rollout of Golaem 9.3.2 for Maya, which adds a Shader Attribute Override node and requires Maya 2024 or later on Windows 10+ or enterprise Linux. Golaem continues to be sold exclusively as part of Autodesk’s Media & Entertainment Collection at US $345 per month or US $2,790 per year. Build requirements include CMake 3.13+, the Houdini SDK, the FBX SDK and a licensed Golaem installation.

The open‑source move is aimed at visual‑effects and production studios that need up‑to‑date or custom‑compiled plug‑ins for newer host software versions, allowing them to keep crowd data in Maya while rendering it efficiently in downstream pipelines.