Hi everyone, I'm a new Houdini user excited about procedural design! My background is architecture and mechanical design, and I currently do product design and visualization.

I use Octane Render to do my work currently. I know it may not be robust enough for production workflows, but for me it produces realistic product renderings and it's quite affordable compared to other high quality renderers. (plus the real-time view thing is cool 8) )

I am simply hoping to do a bit of cross-polination here and put us octane users on the sidefx radar. There have been a good amount of requests on the octane forums to get a plugin going for houdini: http://render.otoy.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=8785&sid=b918e70abe3cf4c0f471a282f791ed43&p=122613#p122613 [render.otoy.com]

Best,

Ian

Well the Houdini Octane plugin is happening.

http://render.otoy.com/newsblog/ [render.otoy.com]

Does anybody now if this will be compatible with Houdini Indie? This combination would be a godsend to individual users like me without a render farm.

I would love to see octane (and other renderers) support in Houdini indie as well.

it doesn't look like Indie allows for third party renderers…

this is something that SESI should make clear on the Product Page.

Fair enough, I thought that might be the case. I just wanted to double check.

There is always Alembic to Octane standalone to fall back on.

arctor
it doesn't look like Indie allows for third party renderers…

this is something that SESI should make clear on the Product Page.

I think I have read someone testing indie with 3dlight, so it could be possible. Sidefx would not benefit from preventing it for indie…..

I did some tests with Indie and 3delight but that wasn't supposed to work
It was fixed in recent versions.

eddgarpv
I did some tests with Indie and 3delight but that wasn't supposed to work
It was fixed in recent versions.

Oh man, why did you post it

Anyway, if third party renderers were supported, even with a resolution cap and bound to the indie/engine licenses, I would buy 2 more indie licenses and 3 engines. Mantra is a great renderer but it is awfully slow compared to GPU accelerated renderers like redshift. Small studios need cheap and fast rendering. So unless I can use houdini for literally anything I do in other tools, I won't buy a full license, because I just can't afford an additional 2.5k annual upgrade plan. That leaves me with Houdini to do a few procedural things, export it to SI and render there.
I may not be representative for the Indie target group, but I'm sure many others see it as I do. Below is a teaser:
Setup in houdini, nothing I couldn't have done in SI , exported as alembic to SI and rendered with redshift. It has brute force GI 3 bounces 256 samples, SSS, bokeh, motionblur and environmentscattering (fog). Rendertime 4.12 min in full HD. With the same featureset mantra didn't even start to render in this time.

Can you please post that scene for us to test with. It would be good to check the mantra settings

here is the scene without the geo. You see the mantra settings though. I tuned the sampling until the GI was noisefree and turned the fog on. It is the sample fog object that comes with the scene from the houdini help. Without the fog my scene renders with a “normal” softwarerenderer speed which still is of course much slower than redshift. You can't beat redshift. It is the only renderer that renders Environment fog/scattering in a reasonable time. So I render where it is supported.

Edit: I find the filesize of 1.1 Mb for a scene with two lights and a camera shockingly big.

This is the rendering from houdini without the fog. 25 min on a I7 3930k. Even if I could cut the rendertime by 50% it still wouldn't be very attractive to render in houdini.

It'll be best if you could share a file complete - loading Indie files into an Fx license reverts to limited resolution non-commercial upon saving and opening. Makes it very hard to test! Just .zip it before uploading if the size is big for the forum.

Using placeholder geo, and substitute colour maps, you can see when you turn on Verbose Level = 4 in Mantra/Properties/Statistics and check ‘Alfred Style Progress’ that the main holdup is using a ‘fog’. Try using a volume node instead and apply a constant smoke shader.

The environment light simply Quality set to 4 is quite high as it's a multiplier on the Mantra settings.

The file size is mainly due to the mantra and clay shaders. Try deleting them and saving the file to see how much space they take.

Thanks MartybNz, I appreciate your insight. I'm aware that I'm a houdini beginner and there is a lot to optimize in my scene. I will prepare a scene containing geo in time, but I still also have a job so it may be not immediately

However, the point I was trying to make is not which renderer is best but having a choice is best and makes every 3d software more attractive. Houdini still is a very specialised product and I haven't seen many statements of companies praising anything else than simulation capabilities.
The Indie License is aimed at small studios. Small studios seldom do big cinematic projects with a lot of computing power required (although it a happens) but mainla about everything clients throw at them ranging from tv commercials or vfx, industrial visualisations, corporate films and events. Very much of this content doesn't have the need to be procedural but requires a lot of mesh processing and fast interaction. If you have the client sitting beside you expecting you to quickly edit a mesh or build something or alter a shader, houdini wouldn't be your first choice to work with. Small studios need speed and fast interoperability. So constantly switching applications back and forth isn't helpfull.
In other words: the more I can do in houdini the more likely I will use it and the more I will invest my money in it. Right now if there were no indie license I wouldn't use houdini at all, because for an “addon” to my pipeline, it simply is too expensive. Sidefx has obviously seen that, thus the indie license, for which I am greatful. But I could do without it like many others could. I bought it for fun to be honest, because in my heart I am a nondestructionist .
There is no redshift for houdini right now but it's likely it will come or something equivalent anyway. If indie user can not utilize those renderers, they will in fact reduce houdini to a plugin. Companies who would use it to create assets for their 10 or more maya seats are liklely to be able to afford a full license. That leaves small game companies as a target group. Well, good luck with that .

Edit: Could you please post a simple volume setup with an area light scattering in a vollume, because the only hint about how to do atmosphere was the fog as it is described in the houdini help.

It's said that one hit of RedShift and you're hooked for life!

IMO it would be brilliant for Indie to be able to use GPU accelerated renderers. Maybe when the plug-ins become available hopefully people will speak up even more loudly! I have not doubts they will

Mantra is a super solid though, it's in the league of Arnold.

Many thanks for the file. I had tried to set it up myself but couldn't get anything but black. I can now check what I missed.

Mantra and Arnold have their advantages, no doubt, programmable shaders being the most important. But many options usually also means a lot of works configuring, setting up (or upsetting sometimes) or just loosing track.
However I put all my hopes in sidefx. Either indie gets a bit more freedom or FX gets a bit more of what is missing .