would you be so kind as to give me a step by step of the process. The help menu just goes through Renderman. I only have what came with my ncv. Thanks in advance.

this video gives a pretty good into to rendering in mantra :
http://www.vislab.usyd.edu.au/sidefx/houdini_video/video_data/divx/rendering/mantra_intro.avi [vislab.usyd.edu.au] (it's in Divx)

After babysitting an hour and a half download it is unable to render the video because the decompressor can not be found. Any suggestions?

you'll need the divx codec > www.divx.com
or if you have Real Player installed you can try > http://www.vislab.usyd.edu.au/sidefx/houdini_video/video_data/real/rendering/mantra_intro.rm [vislab.usyd.edu.au]

there is also > http://visualparadigms.com/houdini/tutorials.php?type=video [visualparadigms.com]

zephyr6
After babysitting an hour and a half download it is unable to render the video because the decompressor can not be found. Any suggestions?

Go to www.divx.com and download the decompressor

You're way ahead of us—thanks.

P.S. After seeing the video I still don't understand the basic concept. Maybe I need to back up a little bit. I have never rendered anything! I am woundering what it is I should be seeing. When do I get to see the rendered animation,- ya' know with actual movement, and what do I do if something isn't showing up in the render view that is in my hip file? also someone mentioned “padding” my file before I render it?

read the ExpressionLang.pdf > section 1, sub-section 8 “Expressions in file names”

a very good idea would be to do the tutorials in the Houdini 5.5 Tutorial Guide ( http://www.sidefx.com/community/learn/general/index.html [sidefx.com] ), there are a couple of bits on basic rendering, you shoudn't have any trouble doing the tutorials in 6.x.

Here's a quick and dirty way to make your first render. I'll detail a couple of things then mention a bit (or at least, what I've learned so far) about rendering.

1. start a new file
2. add a geometry object
3. select the object in network pane then press ‘i’
4. delete ‘file1’
5. add a nurb sphere
6. go to the SHOP layout
7. add a vex shader (plastic will work)
8. go back to the object level, select the geo1 object
9. on the shading tab, click on the + sign next to shader surface and select the shader you added (v_plastic); this applies that shader to your sphere
10. create a light object and transform it to, oh, say 4 4 4 (xyz)
11. in the light parameters select the geo1 object to look at
12. now click on the bluish, launch view: mantra icon (it's at the bottom of your view pane)
13. Look at your first rendered object!

This probably could've been done better, but it's quick and dirty and it works. Now, if you've created something more expansive AND it's animated, you should go to the ROP layout, add a mantra generator and change the settings to render frames, say 1-100 or whatever; note that this WILL take time, as each frame has to be rendered. The more complex the scene is, the longer it will take. As an example, I went through the rocket tutorial and when done I rendered it fram by frame to make a small movie (which I can view in the mlay window; haven't figured out yet how to make it an .avi file or something like that). As there were about 180 frames, I think it took something like 30 mins or so to complete, at a very small 300x200 view size.

You really should follow the already mentioned tutorial guides; they are very helpful.

Yes, I have plenty of animation in Houdini- tutorials and an original. Going by your instructions I still need to know how to “go to the ROP layout. Is the mlay window the one that opens the ”Mantra render view"?
This really sucks! I'll try to figure this out by what you wrote. I'm getting so :!: that something I know will turn out to be a simple process, (that someone could show me how to do in a few minutes in person), is instead taking what seems like forever. (Regarding the .avi don't you need to take it into an editor for that?)

The ROP window you select at the top of the pane (where you click to go to OBJECTS, SOP, CHOP, etc); you want the OUTPUT or ROP (Render OPerations). Make sure the panes are linked together, so they're all on the same page, so to speak In the NETWORK pane, hit TAB and select GENERATORS then MANTRA. (I'm using the TRAINING DESKTOP, so some things might be a bit different, depending on what you have selected). In the parameters pane (below network pane), change the parameters to your liking. For a start you might try these:

for the STANDARD tab:
set CAMERA to cam1 (any camera or light object will work; has to be one or the other though)
for OUTPUT PICTURE, select MPLAY WINDOW
for IMAGE FORMAT, just leave it as is, you can play with different settings as you get more comfortable
put a check in FRAME RANGE then set it to what frames you want to render
Everything else, just leave it at default (again, you play with different settings later)

Now hit the RENDER button

Depending on your scene and the number of frames, this could take a long while

When it's done, the MPLAY window will open up and you will be able to play your animation; note: what's been done to this point is all the frames have been rendered and are sitting in your main houdini folder; what mplay does is just play those files in order. Exactly how to make this into an .avi file or some other movie format I haven't gotten around to yet.

Have fun!

Hi zephyr6,

I hope the following will help to get you started:

a. Start a new Houdini and delete the model Object.

b. Next, create a new Geometry Object and you should see a box with X, Y and Z on it.

c. To do a render, click on the Render icon (blue box picture or first icon from the left) at the bottom of the viewport. By clicking on the icon, you used the “View: Mantra” option to quickly preview the geo1 Object. This option uses a default mantra setting for preview renders.

d. So how do you use another ROP to render? Right-click on the Render icon which will give you a list of ROPs that you can use. So which ROP to use? mantra1 has a better setting with higher anti-aliasing which means the preview might be slower. mantra_fast should, in most cases, render faster. mantra_sel is for rendering objects you selected. For example, you have 3 objects and you just want to render the first one. Select the first object then choose mantra_sel to render just that.

In addition to clicking on the Render button at the bottom of the viewport, you have also launched mplay. You can leave mplay on, start another render by clicking on the button again and the new render will be the next frame in mplay. By doing this, you can render many frames into mplay and compared the difference between each render.

Please try out the above and I hope it helps. Once you're familiar and comfortable with the above, I'm sure you'll have more questions.

Cheers!
steven

also…
in the User Guide section of the install there is a section on rendering…
to get to it - in Houdini > click the ? at the very top right hand side of the interface
this will open a help pane
then click “User Guide Contents” (the first link)
then scroll down to the third last section “Rendering”
and you will see 4 little walk throughs…the first one is the one you want.