Attachments:
houdini_go_totem.zip (2.0 MB)
ani.jpg (77.5 KB)

Ok, I think I've solved part of this, but if my reasoning or workflow is wrong then someone please tell me
I'd used a facet SOP to merge points in my anisotropic disc geometry, which resulted in bendy normals. To correct this, I used a vertex SOP to promote the normals to vertices, then followed that with a fuse. The render seems to use the vertex normals, which is good (I was confused for a while because the scene view only displayed point normals, even though there weren't any really, as they'd been promoted to vertices).

I still can't get rid of the line artefact. And looking at my render now, I'm still not sure that the anisotropy is working

Attachments:
gah.jpg (46.1 KB)

Well, I think the anisotropic reflections are correct…so the last thing to sort out is the line artefact. I've attached images showing the UV map value, and the anisotropic reflection render that results when that UV value is used to drive the anisotropy.

I can't believe that Houdini cannot do this…but I'm stumped

Attachments:
ani_artefact.jpg (43.2 KB)
ani_uv_map.jpg (20.1 KB)