Hi, is it possible to force Houdini to render a watermark on outputs from Karma? We are using the educational edition and would like to add a watermark to any image coming out of Karma.

I understand this sounds a little backwards but it would be really helpful to be able to do this.

Many thanks.

Just cut and paste any node from a .hipnc file into your project. This will downgrade the license and force the watermark to appear in your render. Otherwise, just parent a grid yo your camera and assign a material to it using a logo from the $HFS/houdini/pic/ folder.

I'm looking for a more edge use case, it essentially needs to be an automatic process that happens with every new project. Basically need to tell Houdini if someone renders from this PC render with a watermark.

You can use a TOP context that will overlay your image or text after the render process and it will be a fairly automatic way to solve this problem.

I feel like the easiest way is just to uninstall your Houdini and install an apprentice version.

Initially the idea was to uninstall the educational license for Karma and render without it, hoping it would render with a watermark. Similar to how Arnold works.

I'm looking for a way to do it within the program files or with a bit of coding.

This is for use in an educational environment, eg a school.

Hi,

There are a couple of ways to sort of achieve this.

1. Run houdini as `houdini -apprentice`. This will force houdini into apprentice regardless of the license that is used.
   
2. Run houdini but specify apprentice only. `houdini --skip-license-modes=education,indie,commercial`. This will skip all modes except for apprentice. This is a little better as you wont end up using a commercial license.
   
3. Return your education licenses and install only apprentice licenses on your server. This option is a long-term solution but has the obvious downside that you won't also have access to your education licenses.
   

Cheers,

Hi Matt,

Thanks for the info but I’m not sure we will be able to do that. The limitations of apprentice could cause issues in our pipeline.

It’s not a major problem, it was more of a nice to have thing to deter the students from rendering in the classrooms and pushing them onto the farm.

If the goal is more to act as a deterrent, you could build your own render karma rop hda in USD that wrap around a regular usd_render and artificially add the watermark on top of the input with the magic of solaris.
then use a ophide to hide every rop that would then not be availlable to the student.

there no solution that would prevent a seasoned student from going around these limitation, but it interesting to teach student that every studio/school have their own pipeline and that they must abide to how they work, by using the node provided by the studio.
we have customised all of our rop with special submit button, if our artist don't use them, their output is simply not part of our pipeline and simply ignored, we don't use their rendered image.
they do have the choice between rendering locally or on the farm.