chrism
rrrrrRRRROOOOAAAARRRRRrrrrr
We're on it.

Talking about this, it is supposed Lion will support opengl 3.2, if this is truth then most of houdini opengl capabilities should work in Lion.
Seems drivers are not yet ready in the latest lion releases to support it, but it is in the feature list, I don't know if SESI knows more about this, or have received some news from Apple about the upgrade to opengl 3.2.

circusmonkey
Grab an example file from my site

http://web.me.com/circusmonkey/circusmonkey/Lighting.html [web.me.com]

Rob

Thanks mate!
I will take a look at your example

Hi all.
I have been trying to use some geometry as a light in my renders but still not working.
I am using the new Geometry method for the light object, but I am missing something here.
- Geometry lights works with any render engine, I mean it wroks for micropolygon and raytracing as well?
- I can use any surface shader in the geometry object.
- I there any example scene? I haven't found any example using them.
- Needs the geo object to be renderable? I mean with the display flag on and renderable parameter on. In that case, may I put the display flag in the geometry at SOP level and a Null SOP with the render flag so I can light with my geometry but it wont appear on the scene?

If anyone can drop some light here would be great.
Thanks

jamec9869
I think there is definately some common themes emerging here and this thread is turning into something useful for Sesi. Everyone has different examples but you can see fairly clearly where the frustations lie and where the improvements could be made.

Problem is if SESI can or want to allocate resources to imprive modelling in Houdini.
Unfortunately I think is not the most demanded area of improvement by clients.
Similar problem is hapening with character animation.

rmagee
The exports that are found in the Mantra Surface material are shown in that menu. There are already exports ready to go once you assign the material.
If you roll your own then you need to type the variable name yourself.
Robert

By “exports found in the Mantra surface material”, you mean the outputs for the surface context?
I think would be great to have a exportVOP that could be detected by the Mantra ROP so the image planes menu will be updated automatically.

Pagefan
I don't think it works that way (aka it is that easy)…when you export a variable from VOP/Vex you can render it out to an image plane but you have to type the variable in mantra. It is much like bringing in custom attributes into VOP/Vex but then the other way around

Yep I know, is the way I have been doing it so far.
But after reading Robert's email I though there were a new amazing feature in the Mantra ROP to do it automatically.
BTW I think that in the current state of materials implementation it should be farly easy to implement.
the material only needs to test if there are parameters that exports variables to the surface context, then keep an internal list of exported variables/type, this could be done every time the materia lis compiled.
then the Mantra ROP only needs to look at the materials used by the objects in the scene to be rendered and build a list with all the variables exported by the materials.
Another way to implement it that looks much better to me is to have a new VOP operator, for instance called Export Variables, similar to te current output node but with a list that grows with every new connection. For every new connection in the parameters you can set the name of the output variable, the type comes with the connection data type.
This way is more intuitive and is easy to implemented the system I mention before to keep a list of exported variables to integrate it in Mantra and offer to users an easy way to create secundary render passes.
Just my 2 cents

rmagee
If you are using one of the new all purpose material - Mantra Surface or one of the other new materials which share its setup then there are built-in light exports. Create an Extra Image Plane in the ROP then click on the arrow next to VEX Variable. the various diffuse, reflect and other passes that correspond to the exports in the material are listed. You can set up the ones you want to use. The “Export variable for each light” will split up the export on a light by light basis and will automatically append the light name to the vex variable name in the final image.

Robert

Hi I understand that If I place a parameter VOP in my material surface shader and connect to it something, like the final reflection color, call to the parameter reflct and set it to Export to surface context.
then following your instruction, it should appear in the VEX variable menu, when clicking the arrow button. But only the usual Cf, Of, Af, P, Pz and N appears.
How can I make my exported variables in my materials to appear in the VEX variable options for the Mantra ROP automatically?
Thanks

Well seems we have some news from Apple about an update for graphics drivers, ther is a new developer release of Mac OS X 10.6.5:
http://www.macrumors.com/2010/08/13/apple-seeds-first-developer-build-of-mac-os-x-10-6-5/ [macrumors.com]

Would be good to know if this new changes could help to solve some problems with the OpenGL

twod
The low-level video drivers are done by ATI and Nvidia, while the OpenGL implementation is done by Apple. Since OSX uses OpenGL to do the rendering of its desktop, it makes sense that they'd want some measure of control over the the OpenGL API. However, I think it'd be a lot better if they left the OpenGL implementation up to ATI and Nvidia, since both those companies have a tremendous amount of experience with graphics APIs (IMO). Realistically, I just don't see that happening.

So, nowdays, Windows or Linus is a much better platform for 3D animaion.
And seems things are not going to change too much in the next months.
Writing thid from my MacBook Pro

Hi twod, so as you said drivers for NVidia cards in Mac are done by Apple rather than Nvidia?
What about ATI cards?
This makes me think that Apple is not still a good platform for 3D, if after using Nvidia cards in the mac platform Apple for years is unable to have a decent drivers support this is a serious point to leave the mac platform for 3D work.

I have received an email from support.
Seems that the problem loading hou into vim will be solved for H11.
Good times!

rdms
Just to be clear, I did set the sys.path to be something like /mypathtoHoudini/houdini/scripts/python (no $HFS) but gvim still crashed on import of hou module.

Win or linux?
Anyway I think the problem is the same, hou module in his initialization loads several dynamic libraries and any of them are crashing with VIM.
The other thing that really concern me about this is that, because of the hou mopdule is implemented, I thing is not easier to embeed it in other python tools. Almost any Python IDE out there allows you to load your modules in the python session used by the IDE, O wont be surpraised if the same problem is happing in other development enviroments/tools.

rdms
it says it can't find hou. Looking at the path a bit closer, the $HFS didn't expand so I manually appended to the sys path and when I did python import hou, gvim crashed

If you read my previous post I said:

change $HFS for you houdini path

Of course $HFS doesn't expand in Python.
Anyway if you still want to use $HFS:
:python import os
:python sys.path.append(os.getenv(“HFS”) + ‘/houdini/scripts/python’)

Should work

I love VIM and I also recommend it for any coding stuff.
But VIM and Houdini has a problem.
I sent this last week to support but just in case other people is suffering the same problem or has a workaround.
VIM has a really useful feature called omnicompletion that reallly helps to code faster:
http://vim.wikia.com/wiki/Omni_completion [vim.wikia.com]
But for python vim needs to load the modules you are importing in your source files, and voile! you can't import th hou model into VIM.
Just try the next commands (change $HFS for you houdini path):
:python import sys
:python sys.path.append(“$HFS/houdini/scripts/python”)
:python import hou

You will get an error like this:
Traceback (most recent call last):
File “<string>”, line 1, in <module>
File “/apps/Linux64/houdini/hfs10.0.430/houdini/scripts/python/hou.py”, line 17, in <module>
import _hou
ImportError: /apps/Linux64/houdini/hfs10.0.430/houdini/scripts/python/../../../dsolib/libHoudiniAPPS3.so: undefined symbol: gzopen64

At least this is what I got in my linux box at the office.
And yes, I am launching gvim from a terminal ready for Houdini.
So it is really a pity to not be able to use omnicompletion with VIM and the hou module.
Any workaround for this????

Nice features.
FLIP solver and the new shading infraestructure is really welcome.
Only missing the multithreading architecture, but reading at the end of the note seems it is taking more time to get it working.
Go SESI!

I have the same problem with spanish keyboard.
In fact I think, linux version has exactly the same problem.
And yes! will be rally good to have international keyboard support in Houdini

Sorry for getting this old thread alive.
But I am also an user of a MacBookPro wth GeForce 8600M GT, in fact my machine specs are the same as cobrax posted before.
I am also suffering exactly the same refreshment problems as he showed.
Using Mac OSX 10.5.8.
For instance sometimes when pressing TAB to open the operators menu it appears white, empty, or when I have it open and press any letter to open the submenu with operator beggining with that letter it also appears empty, just a white space.
Also the shelf has problems when hidden/unhiden it.
And finally the other noticilble problem is when dragging a pane's edge to make it bigger/smaller sometimes it mess all the Houdini desktop.
So seems that there are still some problems on the Mac side for 8600M cards.
Thanks

I have tried to use hou.Node we have the createDigitalAsset() just to see if it would work but I got the next error:
Traceback (most recent call last):
File “<console>”, line 1, in <module>
File “/home/prisms/builder-new/Nightly10.0/dev/hfs/houdini/scripts/python/hou.py”, line 4812,
in createDigitalAsset
return _hou.Node_createDigitalAsset(*args, **kwargs)
OperationFailed: The attempted operation failed.
The specified node cannot be converted to a digital asset.


So seems I have to use something different to create an otl from a vopsop node.

hi, I have asked this before in the mailing list , but no luck yet.
Well, I want to compile a vopsop and save it in an otl, like when you use the Compile VEX Code To SOP Type option from the node popup menu, but using just python.
Basically a script that gets the selected vopsop, compile and saves it in an otl.
Similar to what you get using hou.Node.createDigitalAsset() to create a digital asset, but for VEX nodes.
Is there any way?
thx

Another option useing trialSOP and cache based on Macha example..