Hi all,

What rendering topics would you like to see documented (or documented more fully) in the Houdini online help?

I realize there are still lots of places in the docs that need work, but I'd appreciate your specific thoughts on priorities for the rendering section, e.g.
“How to”s you'd like to see, or specific topics you'd like to see treated more in-depth.

Thanks,

Matt Chaput
Houdini technical writer

I think I can speak for Mario, Peter and myself when I say….

Document ALL the VEX functions. IMHO having really good base reference documentation provides a good foundation for the more tutorial level docs.

Some examples….

-Every function that excepts variadic parameters should have the full list below the function help. Not a reference to go look at “gather”. (Personally I'm much more happy with redundant information as opposed to having to play follow the links.)

-Document what all the argws do, like the difference between closest, opacity and screendoor filtering with the trace calls.

-Usage gotchas that may or may not be obvious, ie)

The Journal
This change will break shaders that construct a different bsdf in the two branches of a varying if statement.

If you had code of the form:

if (nrandom() > 0.5) F = diffuse();
else F = blinn(10);

You should now use:

float scale = nrandom() > 0.5 ? 1 : 0;
F = scale*diffuse() + (1-scale)*blinn(10);

Wolfwood
I think I can speak for Mario, Peter and myself when I say….

Document ALL the VEX functions. IMHO having really good base reference documentation provides a good foundation for the more tutorial level docs.

You can add me to this list too, and I'd also quite like some more examples of using CVEX code. In the same vein of more VEX examples per function, that would be really useful and make things so much easier.

Funny that vex & cvex were mentioned … last night I was trying to find documentation on these topics. The keyword ‘trying’.

So, I concur … these topics would be high on the list.

Hi,
yes a complete more vex documentation would be very very nice.

Also some words about the mantra rendering parameters that are not exposed in the parameter pages by default would be nice just let learn more about when they could be useful.

Another thing is a bit of a problem in general in the documentation. In the node properties reference there is often a complete lack of any reference of what your options/typical-value-ranges are. Some examples from the mantra node is:

“Pixel Filter
Specifies the pixel filter used to combine sub-pixel samples to generate the value for the single pixel.”

A listing with the possible values that houdini offers and what their properties are would be helpful here. Most of these things can be found out by doing a round of tests and comparing output and rendertimes and so on but not everyone has the time for that to be honest. In this particular case Jeff Wagner has taken the time and written a really nice article http://www.sidefx.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=725&Itemid=216 [sidefx.com] Copying and pasting some of that over would be very nice.

And most importantly, thank you very much for asking. It's that kind of pro-activeness and willingness to listen that make the sesi team really stand out. :-)

Best regards,
Fabian

I am working with some heavy instancing at the moment, and it would be great if there was some more information out there about the best way to put this all together.

Especially with things like adding extra point Variable controls would be great!


cheers,
-j

mchaput
Hi all,
What rendering topics would you like to see documented (or documented more fully) in the Houdini online help?
I realize there are still lots of places in the docs that need work, but I'd appreciate your specific thoughts on priorities for the rendering section, e.g.
“How to”s you'd like to see, or specific topics you'd like to see treated more in-depth.
Thanks,
Matt Chaput
Houdini technical writer

Perhaps grouping mantra properties into reasonable bundles and explain them in context would make them more accessible for broader audience.

They exist now as a long reference page (which might be ok for some purpose), not in topic's specific order (what is probably most useful in case of searching answers for particular problem).

- Dicing
- Displacements
- Shaders
- Ray tracing
- PBR
- Performance tuning
- Object states
- Image/raster
- etc

Properties could belong to many bundles at once.

hey

yes i'd love to see better/more docs on,
VEX and CVEX
instancing/delayed load docs and example files (really powerfull side of mantra, i had to dig through all the forums to learn this!)
more topics on PBR, like customising the VEX pathtracer would be great!
and again better docs on VEX BSDF's
optimizing PBR and in general
exposing hidden parameters and their uses

thx
j