Hi all!

When I create or download assets for outside set dressing (rocks and stuff) I often wished that Houdini had a decent tri-planar mapping shader. I'm used to it from game engines and it is so convenient not having to create UVs for this type of geo!

I like to use volumetric modeling in Houdini for such assets and it can be quite a PITA to create UVs for geometry like that (good UVs that is, that also work in closeups with no seams and no stretching!).

With tri-planar mapping you don't need no UVs – just slap the textures on and you're good. Of course it has its limits, but still.

So as the built-in tri-planar node in Houdini is quite a pain to use and most of all does not work for normal maps, I decided to create my own. With this Mantra shader I can tri-planar map all needed textures (diffuse, normals, roughness, displacement) at once. And I added a decal mapper as a bonus, to be able to add some details here and there.

If anyone's interested, it's free:

Description, Download & Video page:
https://deepwell.at/pages/triplanar/ [deepwell.at]

Direct link to video:
https://vimeo.com/637772787 [vimeo.com]

Thanks for sharing, looks really useful. As Mantra will be outdated soon, I mean it already is, I think trying to do the same for Karma, would be more beneficial for the user.

All in all, textures looks great when applied.

Hey @SIgor420, thx!
Yea, I know - Mantra is dead...
But as Karma actually only will come out of beta tomorrow with the Houdini 19 release I am still using Mantra and am actually shifting to RedShift

I feel that the whole Solaris/Karma construct is more suited for big productions/studio setups. It seems like having to switch to a whole different app, going from modeling/animating/siming to then doing layout and rendering in Solaris/Karma. To me it feels the same as exporting to say Clarisse and doing it there (and that has a whole other set of advantages).

J.

DeepwellVFX
Hey @SIgor420, thx!
Yea, I know - Mantra is dead...
But as Karma actually only will come out of beta tomorrow with the Houdini 19 release I am still using Mantra and am actually shifting to RedShift

I feel that the whole Solaris/Karma construct is more suited for big productions/studio setups. It seems like having to switch to a whole different app, going from modeling/animating/siming to then doing layout and rendering in Solaris/Karma. To me it feels the same as exporting to say Clarisse and doing it there (and that has a whole other set of advantages).

J.

I see your point. Lets see tomorrow, or I think after tomorrow how things will be. I still think it will be worth it as I believe SideFX will work more on it to make it even easier to use.

SIgor420
Lets see tomorrow, or I think after tomorrow how things will be.

So we have a Karma ROP now!
No need to go full Solaris to use Karma...
Makes it much more solo artist friendly IMHO.