HOUDINI JUMPSTART VOL 8 - INTRO TO LIGHTING AND RENDERING WITH MANTRA

Chapter 01 : INTRODUCTION

Chapter 02 : CAMERA SETTINGS
We look at the various options and settings for the Houdini camera, as well has talk about a couple of things you can do to make your camera mimic real-world camera settings.

Chapter 03 : POINT LIGHTS
In this section, we break down the various settings for point lights.

Chapter 04 : AREA LIGHTS
Area lights represent lights with a physical size, they are the main lights used for rendering in Houdini. In this chapter we look at the important settings that define these lights.

Chapter 05 : GEOMETRY LIGHTS
Objects in your scene and their materials can be used as sources of illumination. Here, we show you how to set this up.

Chapter 06 : DISTANT LIGHTS
We discuss distant lights, and sun lights, and their differences.

Chapter 07 : ENVIRONMENT LIGHTS
Environment lights are light domes that surround your scene. They often have HDR images mapped to them for image-based illumination. This chapter shows you how to set up and work with them.

Chapter 08 : AMBIENT LIGHTS
While rarely used in modern rendering, ambient lights can provide a quick way to add fill light to your scene. This short chapter shows how to use them.

Chapter 09 : SHADOWS
Here we discuss the various shadow options as well as how to include and exclude objects from casting shadows.

Chapter 10 : LIGHT ATTENUATION
We show the various options for light attenuation in Houdini, from real-world falloff to stylised falloffs.

Chapter 11 : GI LIGHTS
Here we look at two different methods for creating global illumination (bounced light) in Houdini. We look at diffuse bounces in the Mantra ROP node and also get to know the GI light, with photon maps.

Chapter 12 : CAUSTIC LIGHTS
Caustics are necessary for reflected and refracted light paths. This chapter shows how to set-up caustic lights for your scene.

Chapter 13 : PORTAL LIGHTS
Portal lights are used to refine the sampling of environment lights through openings in interior renders. We show how to set them up, and do a quick architectural rendering.

Chapter 14 : LIGHT INSTANCING
Lights can be used as instances, quickly adding dozens of lights to your scene. Additionally, we discuss how to have lights inherit point colors from their template points.

Chapter 15 : LIGHT LINKING
We discuss the various methods for using light inclusions and exclusions, for full power over your renders.

Chapter 16 : CLASSIC HOLLYWOOD LIGHTING
We spend some time talking about the artistry behind classic Hollywood lighting and then show how to recreate these setups in Houdini.

Chapter 17 : CINEMATIC LIGHTING
We look at several examples from Blade Runner, and, using posed characters, show how we can recreate these lighting setups.

Chapter 18 : PRODUCT LIGHTING
We look at how products are lit and photographed in the real world and walk through a quick setup to do this in Houdini.

Chapter 19 : APPLYING MATERIALS
Houdini has a variety of ways to apply materials to your objects. We look at all of them here.

Chapter 20 : PRINCIPLED SHADER INTRO
We walk through the various settings of the principled shader.

Chapter 21 : UV’S
This quick chapter discusses the need for UV coordinates when using textures and shows some basic ways to add UVs to your objects.

Chapter 22 : PRINCIPLED SHADER TEXTURES
We look at using textures with the principled shader.

Chapter 23 : PRINCIPLED SHADER ATTRIBUTES
This chapter shows how object attributes can be passed to the principled shader at render time, for a variety of effects.

Chapter 24 : MATERIAL OVERRIDES
Here, we show ways to use Sop level material overrides to change material properties, as well as varying the material properties on instances.

Chapter 25 : MANTRA SETTINGS
We spend a lot of time discussing the various tabs of the Mantra render ROP and talk about various settings that influence the speed and quality of your renders.

Chapter 26 : SHADER BUILDING
We learn how to extend the principled shader, as well as build some of our own shaders from various nodes in Houdini. We also look at special shaders like ambient occlusion shaders, motion vector shaders, and constant shaders.

Chapter 27 : TAKES
Takes allow you to change properties of a scene at render time. We show how to set them up and use them here.

Chapter 28 : SHADOW CATCHERS
To composite your 3d renders on a photographed plate, you’ll need to render out shadow passes. This quick chapter shows how to render them out.

Chapter 29 : WRAP UP