Rendering in Houdini - A big call for discussion

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1. Why not make one ueber-shader builder of each type of Material
surface model.

2.A: VEX context should have the option to give a (flexible) preview above each node.
you still think like other packages where you build a shader for each object or material. in Houdini you build one as a digital asset and reuse it several times.

3. Furthermore there should be a better library of better premade materials.
is true could be more, there are just a couple of them, but that's enoght to get the idea on how to get going, don't forget that the guys in shading developing they are masterminds and all ready know all the stuff about raytracing, bounce etc… some prefer to just code it, other to connect the nodes etc…

4. There should be standard Materials that immitate modern gaming engine standards.
games use regular shaders with normal maps, nothing stops you to display it like that using OGL.


5. Takes, bundles, flipbook, visibility nodes, layers?
everything has it own porpoise, takes, and bundles are not the same, visibility nodes are not the same, layers are not the same, there for you cant do one to rule them all. they can use themselves between eachother.

takes can work with bundles, and nodes, layers are takes in Houdini speaking etc…

5.B. Implement preview-options into the menus so we get a rough idea of what we work on.
what menus? what option? can you do a sketch with picture to illustrate the idea?

5.C Baking anything (to textures) is entirely unnecessarily complicated. Micromesh rendering can be used to render to textures - How? Why? Why do I need to have a specifically named camera in the scene when I don't even use it? - Why can I not have a menu to select, what to geometry to bake from, which geometry to bake to, and what and how to bake? Standard maps should include Diffuse, Specular, Normal, Height, Ambient Occlusion, Cavity, etc. and an option to bake custom designed properties baked in a custom designed way. There should also be an option to use a standard cage or a custom mesh. And of course, It should be possible to bake animations.

you can bake via mantra and use the image plane to take all the passes you need.

I hope this thread will result in some lively discussion of my ideas.

for this to happen you need to illustrate. don't forget you are writing and you have it In your mind, we cant read mind (yet ) you need to tell, what you want, how to do and what to expect. they are awesome at doing the magic behind. but they need to understand why.

might be that some of that is already implemented (not exactly as you want but is there)
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DASD
I don't think Requests get much attention without proper community support.
RFEs get some amount of attention, so long as they're clear, focused, self-contained, and reasonable, regardless of whether there's a forum discussion on the topic. On the flip side, forum threads without corresponding official requests may get no attention, especially if they're not clear, focused, or self-contained.

RFEs may or may not be acted upon immediately, or at all, for a wide variety of reasons, but if something's not officially submitted, it's much harder to justify spending effort on it. It's perfectly okay to submit RFEs for things that people may have already submitted; you may have different ideas or be able to explain things more clearly. Also, things often must be put on the back burner and are forgotten about, so it's good to have something brought up again.

As a side note, although I'm no expert in production pipelines, I suspect that most of the items you've mentioned are not considered part of the “rendering” stage by most of our users. Their pipelines are set up to deal with much of it before the rendering stage. It's not to say that it's not related to rendering, because it certainly is, but people may not read every forum topic to happen upon a topic that they may be able to contribute to.

At Google they write tools in python, not assembly.
FYI: #1 language at Google is C++, #2 is C, #3 is Java. If you're looking for a development job at Google, you should probably have experience in C/C++. Every language is used by someone at Google, (including assembly; they have a driver development team for semi-custom hardware), which is what leads to the misleading arguments people pass around of "You should use , because Google uses ". I've heard that kind of argument being stated for everything from Lisp, to Fortran, to Go, to Ruby, to JavaScript, etc.
Writing code for fun and profit since... 2005? Wow, I'm getting old.
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_HFmdvpe9U2G3OMNViKMEQ [www.youtube.com]
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DASD
Thank you! I will dig into it the moment I find the time.^^

You may want to check the new Mantra Surface Shader. It's your one stop for all your shading needs. It has received some new maps inputs and GGX shader for super cool metal surfaces. Alongside with new UV tools upgrade you can do whatever you want.
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Sorry to hijack this thread.

I personally would love a communion between Substance Designer and Houdini. Export the textures and shader being used in SD directly to Houdini.

It is probably already perfectly doable, but I am just getting started with Houdini again, and I am still as clueless as ever
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+1 for baking
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Substance Designer and Houdini should indeed work together properly and would tighten even more the current “real time” trend for Houdini. SD shaders should be useable with no previous work.

Some more work on default materials would not damage the software either.

The rest of the petitions read more like someone with not enough Houdini knowledge giving an uninformed opinion.
Javier Meroño
FX TD.
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I would agree that Substance Designer would be a god send and also alleviate the need for look development workflows with Substance Painter.

Ultimately it would allow us to build the look outside and the correct context where you can paint and present for later put it on Mantra.

+1000
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jordibares
I would agree that Substance Designer would be a god send and also alleviate the need for look development workflows with Substance Painter.

Ultimately it would allow us to build the look outside and the correct context where you can paint and present for later put it on Mantra.

+1000

I am with Jordi and Netvudu on this. +1 for Substance Designer support. We have a new UV set that is very good so now we need to get with the flow and let substances work with Houdini. It should not be that hard to integrate them with mantra i guess….
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Substance Designer plugin is in development.
Search in the substance Forum and you will find a post…

Edit:

Here is the Link to the post:
https://forum.allegorithmic.com/index.php?topic=668.msg20635#msg20635 [forum.allegorithmic.com]
Edited by - 2015年3月16日 05:34:00
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mandrake0
Substance Designer plugin is in development.
Search in the substance Forum and you will find a post…

This is a huge news. Anyone was on GDC? Apparently they demoed a plugin for Houdini in there…
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Hehe, I almost forgot about this thread.

Looking back:
We now have a Substance Designer Plug-in. So that's fantastic.
We now have an Ueber-shader. That's also fantastic. - Though I would still love presets and more example shaders. But that's a WIP, as far as I understand.
We now have a texture baking tool. - Last time I checked it still needed a bit of polish, though. ^^
And with Houdini 16 I think there will be some changes to node visualisation. - So I'm looking forward to that.^^

Rendering UI could probably still use a rework. XD

Way to go SideFX!
Edited by DASD - 2016年11月29日 15:39:50
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