Wondering what the roadmap for Karma's development looks like. Is the plan that the CPU version be fully complete before releasing any GPU accelerated bits?

Me too, I really find bizarre the lack of information regarding Karma development and future. The point is, Mantra is deprecated and no longer in development, so I think it's important for Mantra users to have information about roadmaps, features and limitations of Karma…

Well, before making Karma fully functional, the task of making hair, volume and particle renderable in Hydra delegate should be performed. If this is done, you can render with Renderman or other Hydra-compliant renderer.

Am also wondering why the license server lists Karma as a 1 year “rental”. Will this be included with Houdini in the future, or only available as an add-on product?

fgillis
Am also wondering why the license server lists Karma as a 1 year “rental”. Will this be included with Houdini in the future, or only available as an add-on product?

Mantra is the same. Licenses are never purchased for Indie, only FX and Core have that option.

goat
Mantra is the same. Licenses are never purchased for Indie, only FX and Core have that option.

Well, I have an FX license, and when I asked SESI about it, this was the response…

We will not be offering Karma as a permanent license. It will only be available as a rental license for a set period of time.
At this time the Karma license is free for a 1 yr license. Next year we may choose to change this.
The Mantra license will remain the same as before.

Fascinating! Karam is currently >4x slower than the competition, so it'll have to be priced at least 4 times less

So Mantra will receive no new features and performance improvements, but will it be kept on life support (bug fixes) and if so, until when?

pickled
So Mantra will receive no new features and performance improvements, but will it be kept on life support (bug fixes) and if so, until when?

Says who?

jsmack
Says who?

During the reveal-“live”-show on youtube Kai said in the comment chat, that mantra was bugfix-only from now on out.

Yikes- the built in engine might be extra? One of my favorite things about my pipeline is not having to pay for render node seats. Karma is promising and I really like the new USD stuff but I'm hoping to eventually get Karma as an option in the out context… but if we have to pay for render nodes..?

The3DStig
Yikes- the built in engine might be extra? One of my favorite things about my pipeline is not having to pay for render node seats. Karma is promising and I really like the new USD stuff but I'm hoping to eventually get Karma as an option in the out context… but if we have to pay for render nodes..?

what do you mean ‘eventually get karma in the out context’? The rop is called ‘USD Render’ and is available in any rop network. The options on the ‘karma’ lop are for convienience and can be recreated with the rendersettings and render product nodes. You can use a fetch rop to grab the usd render node inside the karma lop if you want to still use the nice pacakged karma node within a rop dependency graph.

Jsmack- gotcha. I guess I still have some exploring to do!

We have just posted a comparison of Karma and Mantra in the FAQ section to show you where all the features stand at the moment:

https://www.sidefx.com/faq/karma/ [www.sidefx.com]

Excellent, that's really helpful Robert.

rmagee
We have just posted a comparison of Karma and Mantra in the FAQ section to show you where all the features stand at the moment:

https://www.sidefx.com/faq/karma/ [www.sidefx.com]

Wow Robert, that's exactly what many had been asking for, extremely helpful to understand where Karma is standing right now. thank you very much!

It might be worth putting a sticky to the karma FAQ page in the new solaris forum.

rmagee
We have just posted a comparison of Karma and Mantra in the FAQ section to show you where all the features stand at the moment:

https://www.sidefx.com/faq/karma/ [www.sidefx.com]

This is great, thanks!

What are the plans for houdini crowds?

wildruf
What are the plans for houdini crowds?

When there are functions missing please make a RFE, the next big task are surly karma (lops) and character animation. It would be intressting if chop's get's a bigger update.

Btw. USD based NLE / compositing would be intressting