I am having some trouble getting a take to render. I created a take and called it “shadow” so that I can render a shadow pass. Everything in the take is all set to do just that (i.e. turned off objects/enabled shaders, etc).

In my mantra ROP in the pre-script i entered in the code

takeset shadow

Then in the post-script i entered in

takeset hip

to put everthing back in place.

But what is happening is that the ROP is rendering out a full render, and not occluding or including objects as I set them to do in the take panel. Is there a step that I missed in the process of setting up a take?

-jon

Hey Jon,

Did you save the hip file with the hip take or the shadow take? I remember reading somewhere that not saving with the base take might cause a problem though I could have remembered wrongly.

Alternatively, try setting the following in the Pre-Render Script & see if it works for you.
takeset hip ; takeset shadow
Please let us know how it goes.

Cheers!
steven

Remember too that Takes and VOPs don't work together in Houdini 7 so if you have any VOPs, you can't use Takes.

I recommend waiting for Houdini 8, Takes in Houdini 7 are fraught with problems and limitations. They're a very powerful concept however they got released a little too early, IMHO.

Cheers,

Peter B

I got the take to work now. Turned out I really didnt know what I was doing in the first place But now I understand takes fully. I understand a take as a different variation of the same hip file, where you can turn things on and off, yet jump back and forth to another version of the hip.

Peter, can you explain a bit more about VOPs not working with takes? As a test I built a simple VOP surface shader and it worked fine with a take. Are you referring to a more complicated VOP such as a SOP or POP VOP?

-jon

The problem with VOPs and takes occurs only when you are in a take the first time the VOPNET attempts to generate code. For example, in your simple example, just save the hip file in a non-master take (i.e. not hip), and reload and attempt to render. It will not work correctly.