Hello all,

I’m returning to Houdini after stepping away for a bit, and figured I’d brush up a little by giving the Karma renderer a spin. While the general workflow appears to one-up the stalwart Mantra, I keep running into the same dumb wall, despite going through basic tutorials by three different artists (per this LesterBanks page: https://lesterbanks.com/2019/11/all-about-karma-and-lops-in-houdini-18/ [lesterbanks.com])

While everything else seems very straightforward (though still possibly buggy) the thing I can’t seem to get to is any kind of final rendered bitmap that is not just a field of black pixels. I’ve tried rendering through every file-type option (.exr, .tif, .pic, etc) and through every render buffer (tried MPlay, Render to Disk, Render to Disk in Background, etc.) but I am only getting black images, no matter which tutorial I’ve followed.

Here’s a link to my project structure: https://www.dropbox.com/s/0edzqf0ivr24scx/KarmaKitchen.zip?dl=0 [www.dropbox.com]

I took to monitoring CPU / GPU activity:
While Karma IPR is running, CPU / GPU activity is ~90%+ / ~15%.
For “straight to disk” rendering, CPU doesn’t go above 3%, though Houdini’s Scheduler / Render Manager verifies that the computer is actively rendering.
I’m not sure if this will give any clues, but here’s a snapshot of the RM during render.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/em4bnzcm4rtnd0i/RenderManager.JPG?dl=0 [www.dropbox.com]

Otherwise, I’m running Houdini’s Indie license, though as far as I’ve been able to research, Karma is compatible with the Indie license. Am I wrong about this?

Also, as a general question, is there a hugely significant speed advantage to Mantra? Seems like it might be wiser to hold-off on Karma until it’s out of beta stage. Any thoughts on that thought?

Preemptive thanks to any responders!
NpF

Hi pfistar,
So I downloaded your project. From what I have seen, your setup is correct and should be working.
To be sure, I tried to render using the "Render to Disk" button inside the karma node, and this is what I got (see the attached image).

For your question about the difference of speed, I find karma to be a little bit quicker. But for me, the huge advantage is the karma Viewport, which really helps if you are lighting scenes and you get a really quick feedback of your setup

Hi Matthew

Many thanks for the response!

The .jpg you sent looks more or less what it should look like.
I presume you didn't change any settings before hitting "Render to Disk"?

I just re-opened the file and gave "Render to Disk" another few tries, again with several different output file settings, but I'm still getting blank images. This is a head scratcher.

I'm wondering if there might be something missing from my Houdini install (There's nothing too abnormal about my 18.5 install, though I made a couple of amendments to the .env file per my NVidia device and per my Redshift install).

Thanks again,
NpF

The link to the geo is broken, but I assume it was Kitchen_set.usd? If so, that rendered in about 4.5 minutes here and came out fine. Just clicked Render to Disk and didn't touch anything else. Houdini 18.5.462.

Might be worth commenting out anything extra in your houdini.env, just to test. Also, I find that Karma can be kind of buggy if you leave the IPR running and try to render something. Try setting the IPR to HoudiniGL first.

@Matthew05
Thanks again for the response. Seems to be up to debate about general render speed, though I've heard a few opine that Karma is significantly faster. The convenience of the UI advantage seems like reason enough to switch. I've actually been exploring Redshift in that last 48 hours, which I use regularly with C4D, and am totally sold on it for Houdini so far.


@BrianHanke
I appreciate your insights, as mentioned above, I give things another whirl but was was coming up blank again. For what it's worth, this is what's amended to my houdini.env file

# ---- HOUDINI_NO SLASH = 1 ----
HOUDINI_OCL_VENDOR = NVidia Corporation
HOUDINI_OCL_DEVICENUMBER = 0

# ---- REDSHIFT ----
HOUDINI DSO ERROR = 2
PATH = "C:/ProgramData/Redshift/bin;$PATH"
HOUDINI_PATH = "C:/ProgramData/Redshift/Plugins/Houdini/18.5.462;&"

I tested this by deleting the amendments, and was getting the same results.

Regarding your suggestion about IPR, I assume this simply means switching viewport mode from "Karma" to "HoudiniGL"? If so, that's also something I tried without avail unfortunately.

One suggestion I did receive from another forum was that I might need to "recover (the) render token". I'm a relatively new user and so have yet to ever recover a render token. Though I have some understanding of what it means, I'm not sure where to look for it - I haven't found the answer through searches - Is this something I would need to do through the License Manager app?

Thanks again for the response!
Nik

@BrianHanke

As I'd mentioned it's been a while for me with Houdini so I didn't think to check if all licensing was intact, until someone suggested it. Sure enough my Mantra and Karma licenses were being blocked,presumably by my Firewall blocker app. I went ahead and made adjustments and then did a re-download of all license components, a quick reboot, and voila, I'm now able to render using Karma.

NpF