Does anyone know how to use renderman renderer to render shadow in Houdini? Is there tutorial that talks about renderman shadow in Houdini?
please help!

thanks!

Renderman implementation in Houdini is remarkably invisible, for the most part. In other words, you do things the same way you would for mantra, but just render with rman instead of mantra - go to the light, Shading/Depth Map - Auto generate. Put a name in the ZDepth Map field and you're done.

Of course this doesn't deal with all the issues of writing shaders for lights and surfaces and getting fancier with renderman specific things, but this will work right out of the box. If you want to get serious about it(and assuming you've spent the money on both rman and the Houdini version able to output RIB, that would likely be the case!), look in the Rendering Reference Manual PDF - chapter 3 - Renderman Rendering…

Cheers,

J.C.

Hi,
I just start using Houdini and I wonder that how I can add any name into Z-Depth Map field.
I don't know what kind of information I should select in this field
I clicked the button next to Z-Deph Map and I had no idea what I should do next.

thank you very for your help.

You're talking basic rendering/interface stuff here - I would recommend walking through some of the tutorials rather than getting someone to write out step by step something that already exists…

Cheers,

J.C.

I am so dissappointed that I still cannot get the shadow rendered with renderman renderer.

the renderer that I am using is 3delight.

the lightshader i used is

light shadowlight (
float intensity = 40;
color lightcolor = 1;
point from = point “shader” (0, 0, 0);
point to = point “shader” (0,-1,0);
string mapname = “”;
)

{
float atten = 1;
uniform vector A = normalize(to-from);
illuminate (from, A, radians(30))
{
if(mapname != “”)
atten=1-shadow(mapname, Ps);
Cl = atten*intensity *lightcolor/(L.L);
}
}



Then my setting for the light in houdini is

shading:
Depth map : auto-generate (closest z)
z-depth map : ZTemp/dep.tif

rib
rib shader : “shadowlight” “mapname”

the whole rendered image looks fine except the shadow is missing. But the shadow looks fine when I rendered with mentra.

After I rendered the rib file, I also tried to use the command line to render this file with 3delight. But there is an error message.
“user parameter ”mapname“ is of unknown type”


then I checked the rib, the line for this shadowmap is:

LightSource “shadowlight” “/obj/light1” “mapname”

But the shadowmap file dep.tif was created successfully.

can anyone help me with this problem? It already spent 4 nights with this problem. I believed Side efftects Houdini should write their menu more clear with more example. (especially with the renderman topic)

thank you for your attention!

I think the problem here is that you don't have a clear understanding what “renderman” is. Renderman is a product created by Pixar which is a renderer, you have to buy it, and that's what Houdini supports. The Renderman Spec is a spec from which Renderman(and other renderers) have been derived - but almost *all* of them deviate from the spec somewhat. You are using 3delight, which is not directly supported by Houdini. Possibly some people here have hacked around this and gotten 3delight to work properly…maybe they can pass on some hints for you.

SESI has written fairly clear instructions for using Houdini with Renderman, which is not what you're using…

Cheers,

J.C.

Hi Brucelay,

I've never used 3Delight, but…

When in doubt, check for error messages (which you did, and that's good). And if things still don't work, then re-read the error message – especially the one that continues to come up even after you think you've checked everything.

brucelay
“user parameter ”mapname“ is of unknown type”

In this case, for example, the message says that the parameter is of unknown type.

Could it be that it's not defined as a string? Or that it needs a type keyword before the string?

I'm assuming this is coming up as the rib gets parsed. But if it shows up once the renderer is running, then it could mean that the map is of the wrong type. Meaning that the stuff inside the file (implying that it found it), makes no sense to the renderer…..


Just guessing here, again, I know nothing about 3Delight.

Good luck.