I'm trying to render my scene to a PNG image with only albedo applied, no other shading or lighting. I also want the background to be transparent (hence PNG). Similar to what the Marmoset Viewer [marmoset.co] achieves.

I discovered that the AOVs tab of the Karma Render Properties [www.sidefx.com] LOP allows you to specify beauty, albedo, etc. However, selecting the albedo AOV produces an RGB render with a black background. Only beauty produces RGBA renders with a transparent background.

Is an RGBA albedo pass possible without having to do any compositing? Previously I was resorting to a hack of turning off all shading except emission, and plugging the albedo textures into emission color. I feel like AOV is the "real" solution, correct me if I'm approaching this wrong? Thank you!

The 20.5 new cops slap comp could be a good solution. you can easily add alpha/premult to albedo or whatever aov and do all sorts of basic compositing. Check this amazing tutorial: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OV8zUzZ7K-4&t=1s&ab_channel=Houdini [www.youtube.com]