math ross

Thank you for taking the time.

1. I was thinking about renderer-specific options per "visibility" collection (phantom, visible, matte).
In Redshift for example you could have these options. (Sorry I don't know what the Karma equivalents are yet)

More granular geometry visibility controls:


More granular geometry matting controls:


More granular light contribution controls:


So each collection (phantom, visible, matte) would have these settings to adjust.
In my opinion, this would open up the RenderPass node/workflow to a broader range of scenarios.

2. Great I will do just that.

3. I was not aware of this specification. Thank you for showing me!

I would also love to know how to achieve this.

I am trying out the Render Pass lop node for the first time in Houdini 22.0.368 and have a few questions regarding that node when using Karma.
Note: I am not very familiar with Karma yet. I come from using Redshift in Solaris.

1.
I was expecting to see a Karma-specific tab and did not see one.
Will there be one in the future?

2.
How should we handle the primary visibility of lights?
Currently lights are always visible no matter if they are in: 'matte:includes' or 'cameraVisibility:excludes'.
I would expect any type of primitive in either of these collections to not be visible to primary rays.
This is where maybe Karma-specific parameters would be editable per RenderPass collection.
In this case to modify the attribute 'inputs:karma:light:renderlightgeo'.


3.
When I use collections ('%FG %MG') in includes, it properly adds the collection (not its content).
But when I do the same in excludes, it adds the content of the collections. (not the collections themselves).
Playing with the expansion rule does not change this behavior.

Is that by design?
Having the collections themselves would offer more flexibility in adding prims to the collections at a later point.
Although I appreciate that doing it this way is odd and it won't always be possible when using more complex patterns.

Looking forward to spending more time using the RenderPass node as well as the Shot Builder Tools.
Cheers!