I'm trying to get Houdini to talk to PRman properly on a vanilla install of winXP SP2 32bit. So far I've managed to get it to spit out a rib archive, or a very basic render with no shaders other than what I assume is some default lambertian one. So thats cool- it's talking to PRman and getting it to do stuff. Edit- I'm using PRMAN 14.1 and Houdini 9.5.230

However, I'm having no luck at getting PRman to read other shaders, this is what I've tried so far:

1) Make a Generic Surface in SHOPS. Set the renderman field to the name of the shader (“rmarble” in this case). I then set the Shader Path field in the Renderman (rib type) output node to .:${RMANTREE}/lib/shaders. In windows RMANTREE is set to CPROGRA~1/PIXAR/Render~1.1
I'm using a shader node in SOPS to assign the shader to the geometry. I've appended the PRman bin dir to the windows PATH field so we can find prman.exe fine.

Hit render and I get my grey box. If I set the Shader Path node to anything else the console will complain that it can't find the light shader/s. SO, I know that it's getting into that directory fine and knows there's shaders there, but it won't use rmarble.slo

2) With the same setup as above, this time in shops I make a “RMAN R Marble” node, which I would assume is referencing rmarble.slo, from some directory within houdini. Upon searching MyDocuments and the Houdini dir the only file it can find are in houdini\config\Dialogs\SHOP9.5.230\ri_rmarble

I'm guessimg houdini goes and uses the .:${RMANTREE}/lib/shaders path to go find rmarble?

3) I made rmarble.otl from rmarble.slo using the python tool and put it in the .:${RMANTREE}/lib/shaders dir. Still no luck…

It should be noted that Houdini hangs if I add a shader viewer pane, however I had issues installing RManDisplay via the proto_install tool. It runs through and appends this line to rendermn.ini which is fine:
“/display/dso/houdini CDOCUME~1/ADMINI~1/MYDOCU~1/houdini9.5/ri_shaders/d_houdini.dll”

When it tests the display driver it simply says “Segmentation Fault”, then says that it has installed successfully. Note that I also made sure all the other default lines from rendermn.ini are in the appended version.

I guess my question would be, what other environment variables need to be set for this to work? I've yet to find a centralized guide or resource that documents all the ins and outs of getting this done. The oddforce page has been useful but hasn't gotten me further than this yet. It also took me a while to figure out how to get to the env vars via hconfig but I've yet to figure out what goes on in there fully.

If we could run through a list of environment variables to set, and where/how to set them that'd be grand. This deserves it's own PDF guide later.

Sounds like you've got it right for the most part. I can try to give you some advice, but not sure how much it will help.

Double check that all environment variables work. Right-click on “My Computer” and go to properties > advanced and edit them there. To make sure they work take a command prompt or better yet Cygwin and test them out. (echo, ls or cd to them) Or just put %RMANTREE% in Run and hit enter.

Also, can you pass the test that comes with prman? See the Read Me file in $RMANTREE/etc/setup to take the test. if it fails then go back over the install instructions from the docs.

You can also set an environment variable HOUDINI_RI_SHADERPATH with a list of all your compiled shader locations. This isn't necessary if you supply the RenderMan ROP with these paths though.

Lastly, I would setup a more “unix” like environment for these apps to play nice in Windows if it were me. Houdini doesn't like spaces in file names, so I would recommend creating your own $HOME right on C and put all your custom shaders and working files in sub directories from there. This should get proto_install working and everything else as well. (note, you don't need to add anything to the rendermn.ini the proto_install generates. Prman will still read the copy in $RMANTREE/etc)

I've attached a very simple file that may help you, but probably not. I wish I could give more advice, but I've only ever used the two apps together on Linux.

Hi Alanw
I download the basic.hip is working
how to create prman attrib tap in geo node? it's very useful?
if apply glass shader i'm not getting Refraction and Reflection.
give me one example file for Reflection and Refraction on the teapot.