Achim Dietze

I fixed this by switching back to Redshift and not using Solaris. I do not have time to "R&D" this.

tamte

OneBigTree
Still no solution in 19.5?
What's the holdup?

I personally haven't used Karma much, but there is this since 19
https://www.sidefx.com/docs/houdini/nodes/lop/backgroundplate.html [www.sidefx.com]

Does it not provide AOVs you are after?

I am not looking for AOVs I need a Matte shader for catching shadows and mask objects in the scene with complex geometry, like the Redshift Matte_Shadow - without having to go through a comp first. As far as I understand the Background plate is meant to catch a camera projection to interact with the scene.
I have also a bunch of problems with controlling render visibility using the standard matte shader for Mantra (which works in a way in solaris) but it is all too much hassle for the quick turnaround I need.

https://www.sidefx.com/forum/topic/86688/ [www.sidefx.com]

Edit:
I tried the Background plate but it seems just as problematic and it doesn't exactly do what I need.

tamte
It's not technically a problem in Houdini, you just need a tool with a state that does the conversion

and I think Edit SOP would be a good node to include such options

Since how it works in other apps it's just values entered in a tool state that get applied to whatever the final object space coordinates are, to avoid creating any live dependency which would not be desirable for adhoc editing of a geo

I think everything that would actually need a dependency can be solved in other ways. I am just looking for a quick way to push a point or a group of point to a specific value in space. If I could even do that across multiple objects (without merging them first), that would change life for me in Houdini.
I think ( again) of a set of imported geometry spread over different hierarchies for example. If I could just grab some points of multiple objects and do a simple point transform, that would be great.
If there was a way to automatically create nodes in a node tree at user defined insert points so they could be created from the object level for a selection of objects.... But I'm probably dreaming a bit there....