Mikk Tangent Space seems to have evolved into the standard for Unity, Unreal Engine and the vast majority of PBR texture creation pipeline tools such as those from Algorithmic, Quixel and The Foundry's Mari & Modo (improved texture baking new to v10).

Does SideFX plan to build MikkT into Mantra texture baking? In researching the issue I found a plugin on Github but it looks like it has problems with H15.

https://github.com/teared/mikktspace-for-houdini [github.com]

Many thanks in advance.

The tangent space used by the texture baking tools is based on derivatives of S/T, which may be ordered differently depending on the application. We will add support shortly for alternate tangent bases, which will include the ‘Mikk’ standard. This will likely be exposed as a parameter on the ‘Tangent Normal ’ VOP, which is used by the baking tools.

Thanks for your rapid reply.

Great to know that alternate tangent bases will soon be included. I know it's unlikely that you can give an ETA for this but is it likely to happen during the H15 cycle or more likely be something for H16?

In addition to the baking tools, there will likely be a few areas that expose a choice over tangent frame. For example, the ‘PolyFrame’ SOP, which stores tangents as vertex attributes. Currently the SOP uses UV derivatives, but these are matched to the ordering used by Mantra. It would be good to offer alternate spaces here as well. This should bring us in-line with applications using meshes in that space.

The timing of the feature is still under review, though I believe this would fall under the H16 release. If this is a more pressing issue that may change, though.

All sounds very flexible and useful. As for timing there are plenty of other baking options available in the short term for game/real time engines. From a personal perspective I'm happy if a wait till H16 will mean a more robust/flexible toolset that covers most bases.

Really good to know it's on your radar.