Chris Rydalch
goldleaf
About Me
Member of R&D team at SideFX, working to improve Solaris and Karma workflows in Houdini. Spent the previous 10+ years in FX, crowds, animation, character fx, and pipeline departments for feature animation.
EXPERTISE
Technical Director
INDUSTRY
Film/TV
Houdini Skills
Availability
Not Specified
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SideFX Staff
Since Sep 2007
Intern Alumni
2011
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Recent Forum Posts
Do I need to cache an animated Switch LOP ? Oct. 9, 2025, 4:26 p.m.
You can't cache a Switch LOP to USD, it has no representation in USD. So whatever is switching your LOP is causing the ROP to not write out the USD.
Material Linker - Missing Delete button? Oct. 3, 2025, 11:22 p.m.
There seems to be a bug showing the icon, I can click and delete the card.
I'm not sure we've ever seen the linker delete any materials automatically. By default it is set to Filter Based on Selection, but if you turn that off, do they come back? If not, try logging a separate bug for that one too. Thanks!
I'm not sure we've ever seen the linker delete any materials automatically. By default it is set to Filter Based on Selection, but if you turn that off, do they come back? If not, try logging a separate bug for that one too. Thanks!
Assigning One Component Material Across USD Variants Sept. 26, 2025, 5 p.m.
Component Material, or really any of our material assignment nodes, you need some sort of prim in the scene, to author the binding.
If I were you, I would actually simplify things further in the asset setup you can. If you get rid of the number suffix, so all of your geometry variants' prims are just `/palmtree`, then your material binding can be done in one node, and you'd be good to go.
Another option is to do the material binding/creation from SOPs and your Component Geometry nodes. Create the `usdmaterialpath` attribute in SOPs, and set it to something like `/ASSET/mtl/leaf`. Then on the Component Geometry parameters, go to Primitives, and set Bind Materials to Create and Bind Materials Based on Imported Attribute. This will create empty materials, and bind them. Then in your Material Library, as long as you just create the materials at those same locations, you shouldn't have to do any binding on the Component Material LOP, and only need to use one of those nodes.
Attached is an example, hopefully this helps, but I would recommend keeping the scene graphs the same. That will simplify other operations down the road, such as light-linking perhaps.
If I were you, I would actually simplify things further in the asset setup you can. If you get rid of the number suffix, so all of your geometry variants' prims are just `/palmtree`, then your material binding can be done in one node, and you'd be good to go.
Another option is to do the material binding/creation from SOPs and your Component Geometry nodes. Create the `usdmaterialpath` attribute in SOPs, and set it to something like `/ASSET/mtl/leaf`. Then on the Component Geometry parameters, go to Primitives, and set Bind Materials to Create and Bind Materials Based on Imported Attribute. This will create empty materials, and bind them. Then in your Material Library, as long as you just create the materials at those same locations, you shouldn't have to do any binding on the Component Material LOP, and only need to use one of those nodes.
Attached is an example, hopefully this helps, but I would recommend keeping the scene graphs the same. That will simplify other operations down the road, such as light-linking perhaps.