What's the process for building a library or gallery of solaris/karma/usd materials? For mantra, we have the material gallery. Saving a materialX subnet to the gallery doesn't seem to work for me (even adding keywords). Is there a solaris specific gallery or a way to use the existing gallery?

Thanks!

Brad T.

2+ years later and I'm still wondering this. H20 has a built-in, read-only gallery available through the material linker node. Is there a way for me to create my own material gallery?

BradThompson
2+ years later and I'm still wondering this. H20 has a built-in, read-only gallery available through the material linker node. Is there a way for me to create my own material gallery?

There's an option to make a new database on the material linker, but I haven't tried to add anything to it.

It is possible to make a new material catalog, but we haven't exposed a UI for it the way we did with the Component Builder's ability to add your new asset to an asset gallery database.

If you're willing to run some python code, you can use the assetutils.MaterialGallery.addMaterialsFromFile method to add materials from a USD file on disk to a material catalog database. We are hoping to provide a nice workflow for this, but first we need to work out tools for authoring sensible sets of materials (where a generic base material is specialized to create a bunch of specific materials). So no promises on when this will appear, but we are aware of this missing piece.

mtucker
It is possible to make a new material catalog, but we haven't exposed a UI for it the way we did with the Component Builder's ability to add your new asset to an asset gallery database.

If you're willing to run some python code, you can use the assetutils.MaterialGallery.addMaterialsFromFile method to add materials from a USD file on disk to a material catalog database. We are hoping to provide a nice workflow for this, but first we need to work out tools for authoring sensible sets of materials (where a generic base material is specialized to create a bunch of specific materials). So no promises on when this will appear, but we are aware of this missing piece.

Hello Tucker,
Testing this out today. I am not too well versed in python though. At the moment I have a new db, and a material I have sent to disk as a usd file. I am trying to run that command within the python source editor and it is telling me there is no module named 'assetutils'.
Any additional help would be appreciated thank you!!

`assetutils` is a module inside the `husd` module. So use `from husd import assetutils` to gain access to that module.

Has there been any progress on making an 'artist friendly USD / Mtlx material gallery'?
I really hope so.

Mike_A
Has there been any progress on making an 'artist friendly USD / Mtlx material gallery'?
I really hope so.

The Material Linker LOP gives you access to the built-in SideFX library and also the option to access the AMD MaterialX library.

Switch to the Catalog tab. To load the AMD library (or any library you want), click the cog wheel.

To add to the above, any imported catalog is still beholden to USD, so they're not editable by default. You'll still need the Edit Material options to tweak these.

I want to:

1. Build my own Karma materials from scratch.

2. Drag and drop them into a user friendly searchable gallery I can use across my projects.

3. Drag them back into material linker or wherever I want to use them.

Is that too much to ask in 2025?

Mike_A
user friendly

Don't be silly. This is USD we're talking about. "User-friendly" does not belong here.

So, you can build your own material library by just saving out materials as USD assets. You can have them saved individually, and then also to one master USD that you can then import to get all your materials.

As for the thumbnails - things get hairy here. If you've used materials in Houdini before, you'll know that SideFX seem to internally hate material thumbnails with a fiery passion, so rolling your own is frowned upon.

The Component Builder LOP can get you thumbnails rendered on your USD asset, but that will include geometry with the asset.

Both the default material catalog and the AMD material catalog have materials with thumbnails that can be imported without geometry, but I have not found any information on how this is executed. The thumbnails seem to be stored internally in the .db file, and not with the actual USD assets (I could be wrong, but I have not been able to locate the thumbnails anywhere).

If I create a blank material catalog (database file) and try to import any USD asset, nothing seems to happen. Maybe this is a bug. So I now see that it's not a bug, just not implemented and you'll need the Python referenced above by mtucker. My Python is not good enough to crack it and I cannot find any online reference for that code and how to get it to actually work.

Maybe someone from SideFX can address that here.

eikonoklastes
Don't be silly. This is USD we're talking about. "User-friendly" does not belong here.

I 'enjoyed' that : )


OK, you're confirming what my baby steps into Solaris and USD were suggesting. So I am at least reassured that I'm not the village blind man and everyone else is happily using some swish material gallery / management set up I've no idea about.

I should make a poster for my wall: "Houdini and user convenience do not go together. Get over it."

You could use OD tools, which allows you to dragndrop (Solaris) Materials to an Assetbrosser and generate Thumbs from there:

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/QiYnNszZcsE [www.youtube.com]

https://origamidigital.com/cart/index.php?route=product/product&product_id=66 [origamidigital.com]