COMPARE KARMA

Compare the features found in Karma XPU, Karma CPU and the legacy Mantra renderer.
Be sure to note that all development going forward will be for Karma.

General Support

Feature

Karma XPU

Karma CPU

Mantra

Production-Ready

CPU

GPU

Load from USD 

Load from IFD

Open Image IO

Material & Shaders

Feature

Karma XPU

Karma CPU

Mantra

Quick Surface Material

Material X

VEX | Principled Material

USD Preview

Rounded Edge/Dirt Masks

Toon Shader

Outlines

VEX Shading

Texture Baking

Material Overrides

Material Variation LOPS

Material Variation LOPS

Material Stylesheets

Karma Physical Lens

CVEX Lens Shader

CVEX Volume Procedurals

Planned for Future

Andriy Bilichenko

General Features

Feature

Karma XPU

Karma CPU

Mantra

Motion Blur

Depth of Field

Adaptive Sampling

Random Walk Sub Surface Scattering

Volumes

Heightfields

Instancing

Nested Instancing

OpenSubdiv

Displacement Shading

Crowd Support

USDSkel support

USDSkel support

NURBS

Lens Shaders

Absorption and Nested Dielectrics

Pyro Shader for Volumes

HdCoordSystem support for shaders

Uniform Volume Geometry

Automatic Ray Bias

Path Guiding

ACES: Texture Color Space

Denoising [Optix/intel]

Filmic Tonemapper

Arbitrary Output Variables | AOVs

Advanced Stats/Diagnostic AOVs

Deep Images

Cryptomatte

Light Path Expressions | LPEs

Lights

Feature

Karma XPU

Karma CPU

Mantra

Point Light

Dome Light

Portals on Dome Light

Distant Light

Disk Light

Rectangle Light

Sphere Light

Cylinder Light

Geometry Light

Physical Sky

Shape Control: Cone

Shape Control: Focus

Shape Control: Barn Doors

Shape Control: IES Mapping

Light Tree

Light Filters

Light Linking

 *
 *

Shadow Linking

*
*

* No Geometry Lights except when using UsdMesh Light

Andriy Bilichenko

Render

Feature

Karma XPU

Karma CPU

Mantra

Hair & Fur

Curves

Tubes

Tubes, Ribbons, Oriented ribbons

Points

Viewport Render

Render View

Solaris Viewport/Render Gallery

Solaris Viewport/Render Gallery

Interactive Mplay

 **

Snapshot Gallery

Render to Disk

HQueue | Distributed

Command Line Render

HUSK

HUSK

Check Pointing

HUSK

** No Click to Render

[This chart includes features found in Houdini 20.5]

KARMA FEATURES AVAILABLE IN:

 Houdini CORE     |       Houdini FX     |      Houdini Indie     |      Houdini Education     |      Houdini Apprentice


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