Hello guys,
I've made some shaders where I have utilized lots of procedurally created maps for all the material x shader inputs, so a lot of texture mixing. I would like to bake down the result of these mixes to one final map for each shader channel (for the lack of a better word) in order to have fewer texture calls in the final scene. The same would apply for various procedural texture mixes.

I found this link to the tokeru website: https://www.tokeru.com/cgwiki/HoudiniLops.html#texture_baking_with_karma [www.tokeru.com]

This was done in H19.5 and I can open and render/bake the result of the test scene just fine. But, when I try on my own scene, created from scratch in H20 I can not get it to work properly.
Firstly, it seems that various things, like the karma uv lens shader has been removed from all the tab menus. Is this correct?
Secondly, the example uses the "rendersettings" node, not the karma rendersettings node. There is no option to texture bake via the karma rendersettings node, is there? Or have I overlooked something?
Thirdly, after copying over nodes from the tokeru test scene (since I could not find them in H20) it did not render as expected, and shortly after I just got a segmentation fault program crash, so that did not help. So, are there stability issues with texture baking in Karma/Solaris and that is why nodes have been removed or hidden?

Finally, is there a better, alternative way to texture bake with Karma in H20 than the bespoke example from the tokeru website?

Thanks,
Dag

Dougie0047
This was done in H19.5 and I can open and render/bake the result of the test scene just fine. But, when I try on my own scene, created from scratch in H20 I can not get it to work properly.
Firstly, it seems that various things, like the karma uv lens shader has been removed from all the tab menus. Is this correct?
Secondly, the example uses the "rendersettings" node, not the karma rendersettings node. There is no option to texture bake via the karma rendersettings node, is there? Or have I overlooked something?
Thirdly, after copying over nodes from the tokeru test scene (since I could not find them in H20) it did not render as expected, and shortly after I just got a segmentation fault program crash, so that did not help. So, are there stability issues with texture baking in Karma/Solaris and that is why nodes have been removed or hidden?

I haven't done any production scene testing, but the quick test I did was working. I didn't see any of the required nodes missing from my tab menu. I didn't use a render settings node directly, but use a render settings edit to pick the udim and bake object id after using geometry settings node in combination with a camera setting the lens shader.

Texture baking seems to only work with keeping shadows ?
For it to properly work, it would need the ability to output shader variables as a UsdRenderVar(AOV).
This would also be useful in speeding up shader building.

I'm really missing this feature as I’d like to export my procedural depth maps as a 16-32bit float image.

NicTanghe
Texture baking seems to only work with keeping shadows ?
For it to properly work, it would need the ability to output shader variables as a UsdRenderVar(AOV).
This would also be useful in speeding up shader building.

I'm really missing this feature as I’d like to export my procedural depth maps as a 16-32bit float image.

You can output shader variables when baking. The output isn't any different than a non-bake render. A bake render is with a fancy camera that looks from the point of view of the uv coordinates.

The limitations are the same as with mantra baking: no bleed, no raster based baking (closely touching surfaces or overlaps will result in errors), no shading direction (I vector) override. COPs is still the best way to bake procedural maps.

jsmack
I haven't done any production scene testing, but the quick test I did was working. I didn't see any of the required nodes missing from my tab menu. I didn't use a render settings node directly, but use a render settings edit to pick the udim and bake object id after using geometry settings node in combination with a camera setting the lens shader.

@jsmack : Thanks for your feedback first of all

I'm curious about the nodes - you say they are not missing from your tab menu. I still cannot find them though, so I must be looking in the wrong place. You are using H20, right? Can you please tell me/show me where the before mentioned nodes can be found? I mean in which menu?

Secondly, I tried to put down the nodes that you said you did - the render settings edit and geometry settings nodes, and am seeing something quite strange. First of all the first render settings edit I put down gave me a warning that the API schema could not be applied (see attached image). Any idea of what that warning really means? Then, to check if I had set up something wrong, I put down a second node for testing against the first one, and it seems to be completely empty... Is this a bug? Or am I missing something here. Again, please see the attached image.

Also, when you guys talk about outputting shader variables as aov's are you talking about aov's you can set up in the render settings or something you have to set up in the karma shading network itself?

Thanks,

Dag

Dougie0047
I'm curious about the nodes - you say they are not missing from your tab menu. I still cannot find them though, so I must be looking in the wrong place. You are using H20, right? Can you please tell me/show me where the before mentioned nodes can be found? I mean in which menu?

The lens shader is in the tab menu for VOPs. Create a matnet to place the lens shader inside. The material library has the tab menu restricted to subnets/material builders only, and is not the correct place for shaders that don't live on the stage. A lens shader is merely a property attached to the camera and karma finds it in the Houdini path, rather than the a proper USD encoded material.

Dougie0047
Secondly, I tried to put down the nodes that you said you did - the render settings edit and geometry settings nodes, and am seeing something quite strange. First of all the first render settings edit I put down gave me a warning that the API schema could not be applied (see attached image). Any idea of what that warning really means? Then, to check if I had set up something wrong, I put down a second node for testing against the first one, and it seems to be completely empty... Is this a bug? Or am I missing something here. Again, please see the attached image.

the render settings edit node needs to edit something. In your network I don't see a karma render settings or render settings node for it to edit. Set up the render normally, and then add the edit afterwards to modify the properties for baking. This can also be done by right clicking the rendersettings prim in the scene graph tree with the karma render settings node selected, (or any node downstream from it).

Dougie0047
Also, when you guys talk about outputting shader variables as aov's are you talking about aov's you can set up in the render settings or something you have to set up in the karma shading network itself?

both

Hello again. I've now tried again and compared my setup with my geo towards using the same setup with a standard pighead.

For some reason the pighead render baking seems to work, whereas when I try the same with my own geo I do not get the comparable results. It seems that only parts of the geo gets baked properly, whereas most of the geo simply renders as black. If you see the attached image you can see how it looks as well as how the pighead bake looks like and also a few other views of the setup.

In general the setup for the pighead is just a copy/paste of the setup for the head, with the exception that for my geo the material setup etc. is 'live' for the lack of a better word. In other words not embedded in a usd file.

Any further ideas as to what is going wrong here, or what I can do to figure things out?
Help is much appreciated. Unfortunately though I cannot upload the actual hip file at the moment.

Thanks,
Dag