LOOK DEV
Solaris and Karma streamline the look development pipeline by offering an integrated workflow for creating, visualizing, and refining assets with precise control over every visual detail.
Solaris
Solaris provides a powerful node-based environment for look development, enabling artists to manage complex scene layouts, lighting, and material assignments in a non-destructive and highly flexible way
Shot Builder
The new shot builder tools simplify working with USD by providing structured project organization, streamlined multi-shot workflows, and basic asset versioning. This makes collaboration and iteration easier for lighting artists and smaller studios.
Live Render in Gallery
The updated render gallery introduces live rendering and image comparison tools, enabling lighting artists to preview near-final frames, adjust settings safely, and streamline iteration with faster, more accurate feedback.
Scene Graph Expansion
The updated scene graph tree improves clarity and efficiency by visually highlighting instanced assets, complex hierarchies, and performance-heavy elements, helping lighting artists better manage and navigate complex USD-based scenes.
Time Samples
The enhanced scene inspection tools allow lighting artists to view and analyze time-sampled animation data directly, making it easier to debug motion blur issues and verify animated properties within complex scenes.
materials
It is important for artists to build physically accurate, versatile shaders that integrate seamlessly into complex scene layouts and lighting setups. OpenPBR will help simplify look development within Solaris.
OpenPBR Support
OpenPBR surface support introduces a versatile, industry-standard Uber shader that enhances shading consistency and realism across Karma CPU, Karma XPU, and the Vulkan viewport.
OpenPBR Volume
OpenPBR Volume introduces an emerging industry-standard solution for volumetric shading, aiming to deliver more consistent, high-quality rendering of effects like smoke, fog, and fire across different tools and pipelines.
Stencil Maps
Stencil maps offer a faster, more efficient alternative to opacity shading, improving render performance by around 25%, while still supporting complex texture patterns and detailed variations for foliage and other assets.
Primvar Texturing
Primvars can now drive texture maps, allowing lighting artists to introduce procedural variation, such as color changes, across multiple assets for more natural and diverse visual results.
Karma
Karma delivers physically accurate lighting and shading, allowing artists to achieve high-quality, photorealistic results efficiently.
Karma Rayswitch
The new Karma ray switch shader allows lighting artists to control material properties separately for primary, secondary, reflection, and refraction rays, enabling greater flexibility and creative control in shading.
Material Mix
Karma XPU now supports mixing up to 16 surface shaders of the same type, allowing lighting artists to blend different material looks such as metals, paints, or patterns, based on reflections or other scene properties for more creative control.
Limit Color
The new limit color feature allows lighting artists to assign a fallback color when rays hit their limit, helping hide rendering artifacts and optimize performance without increasing ray depth settings.
Outlines
The new outline feature in Karma CPU lets lighting artists add customizable object outlines for stylized, schematic, or mixed visual styles, offering per-object control over line properties like color and thickness to enhance artistic flexibility.
Gsplats
Karma XPU introduces alpha support for rendering Gaussian splats, giving lighting artists early access to cutting-edge point cloud rendering technology with upcoming improvements and USD standardization on the horizon.
Fur Shader
The updated fur shader improves the rendering of wet fur, allowing lighting artists to achieve more realistic and visually striking results in scenes involving water interaction.
Lighting
When working with lights, USD helps you manage interactions as they become more complex. Ensuring artistic intent while maintaining performance and avoiding visual artifacts demands precise control and iterative fine-tuning.
Geometry Lights
USD now supports decorating primitives with emissive shaders that act as actual lights, giving lighting artists more control through features like light linking and interactive adjustments.
Prims from Points
The new USD Configure Prims from Points tool lets lighting artists easily convert points into light primitives and assign properties, streamlining the process of populating scenes with complex lighting setups.
Slap Comp
Slap comps are crucial in lighting pipelines because they allow artists to quickly combine rendered layers, passes, or plates to create a rough composite for review that provides fast feedback.
Live Render | Copernicus
The file COP now supports live rendering, allowing lighting artists to pull rendered pixels directly into compositing for real-time adjustments, layering, and post-processing without saving intermediate files.
Image Filters
The new image filters feature lets lighting artists apply and adjust post-process effects in real time, offering flexible control to preview, tweak, and even bake visual adjustments directly into renders.
Vulkan
Vulkan is production-ready with Houdini 21 and provides a modern graphics framework that ensures greater stability, scalability, and future-proofing for advanced visual effects and real-time visualization.
Ambient Occlusion
The enhanced ray-traced ambient occlusion provides lighting artists with more realistic shading and contact shadows in real time, enabling accurate visualization of depth and light interaction while setting up scenes.
Work Lights
Work lights enable lighting artists to quickly set up and instance multiple preset lights in the viewport, providing efficient real-time visualization with accurate ray-traced lighting, shadows, and ambient occlusion.
Physical Sky
The physical sky and uniform fog system enables lighting artists to achieve high-fidelity previews with realistic atmospheric effects like haze, bloom, and sun occlusion for more accurate lighting visualization.
Gaussian Splats
Gaussian splats allow lighting artists to visualize highly detailed point cloud scans with realistic lighting, shadows, and opacity in real time, while still enabling full editing and seamless integration of 3D objects into photorealistic scenes.