Houdini14 Sneak Peek

[Pancho]

Rendering in Modo e.g. is a blaze with the Xeons, but I don't know for Houdini. I plan to render rather in other packages, but in terms of workflow it's hard to say how much time you spend on tweaking settings (single core + GPU display) vs simulation time (multithreaded + GPU calculations).

[Mathaeus]

Rendering in Modo e.g. is a blaze with the Xeons, but I don't know for Houdini. I plan to render rather in other packages, but in terms of workflow it's hard to say how much time you spend on tweaking settings (single core + GPU display) vs simulation time (multithreaded + GPU calculations).

I'd say, part of Houdini related to Mantra, this is much more streamlined than the rest of application. In other word, if you're able to setup the FLIP fluid sim in Houdini ( not that hard for basic tasks), definitively you'll be able to get it to render properly. Memory issue I've described a few pages above ( a lot of triangles in displaced geometry), happens with Modo 801 too, by the way. In difference to Modo or V-Ray, Mantra PBR is a CPU path tracer, there is no interpolated ray traced GI method, like Modo IC. On flip side, I found Mantra a much easier to clean the noise than Modo Monte Carlo. My personal recipe is just to set the 'min reflection limit' ( a sort of threshold for multiple importance sampling), to something more than zero, some higher sampling values than default, and that's it. Never tried to render archiviz interior, anyway.
When it comes to hair, volumes, water, Mantra could be stronger than anything else - it's built renderer, having the options and dirty tricks for everything generated by Houdini, like a fast 'fake caustics' for water, or ability to just turn of the 'grainy' sampling for some object. Especially for hair is so much easier to clean the noise, than in Modo.

FLIP fluid in Houdini is fast to simulate, for my taste and general speed of such sims. One can't expect miracles here. Anyway, good part imho belongs to application in general - if you want, you could cache only the particles, leaving the meshing for render time. Also there are many variances, how you'll cache something. Just if you want (not best idea), you could cache directly to RAM, without writing to disc.

On not-so-nice side, if you're running into something unusual with rendering, for example you want to remap the global position to texture in material, you have to run into a few abstractions ( nicely hidden in SI or Modo), like ' vector space conversion'. Houdini offers many procedural patterns, but almost every of them outputs the different range, an so on and so on. App itself is not nearly forgiving as SI, especially VOP compared to ICE or SI Render tree.

[angus_davidson]

Saw this on Vimeo ,

Octane plugin rendering in Houdini

Very nice

[Rork]

wow! very cool!

If one is to start using H14, there's some really nice renderers to choose from, in addition to Mantra

rob

[SamHowell]

wow! very cool!

If one is to start using H14, there's some really nice renderers to choose from, in addition to Mantra

rob

Not available to Apprentice or Indie users though.

[Hirazi Blue]

One thing that has always remained unclear to me, is where Mantra actually "stands"
in comparison to other "production proven" renderers (especially of the modern era).

[SamHowell]

One thing that has always remained unclear to me, is where Mantra actually "stands"
in comparison to other "production proven" renderers (especially of the modern era).

In my very limited experience I would say Arnold is the nearest equivalent to Mantra PBR.

[MauricioPC]

The power of Houdini ... animation by the numbers!

[MauricioPC]

One thing that has always remained unclear to me, is where Mantra actually "stands"
in comparison to other "production proven" renderers (especially of the modern era).

Most (if not all) on the Axis Animation reel are Mantra renderings. Quite impressive.

[Mathaeus]

One thing that has always remained unclear to me, is where Mantra actually "stands"
in comparison to other "production proven" renderers (especially of the modern era).

Latest, PBR variance could be taken as 'Arnold lite' (hope this statement won't create a new, looong thread...) where 'lite' refers to, perhaps smaller count of polygons than Arnold, possible to eat by Mantra, without problems.
Older variances, still present, are a sort of Renderman compliant, REYES and so on, but definitively not fast as 3delight (when it comes to REYES only rendering) - but 3Delight traditionaly was a fastest reyes render on planet (this is for another long thread...).
Mantra PBR definitively does not behave as reyes renderer, anymore, but some typical Renderman features are transferred to PBR, like 'point rendering', where dots are only only shaded, without using polygon geometry. This point thing is 'featured' on bottom of pic bellow.
Since v13 or 12, I think, they are adding a number of hard coded, built in shaders, in newest shader fashion. Like hair dual scattering of Marschner style, GGX, Ashikhmin and so on.

[Bullit]

Question is time/easy of use not quality, most renders today can achieve quality.

[NNois]

hi guys,
Did someone has experience with texture baking in houdini ?
saw we have to use one ROP for each objects and uv... seems tedious but i'm sure we could chain render right ?

Any experience on this ? Before i was using Soft/MR but MR is crap and i would really want to try a real PBR baking solution

EDIT: PBR raytracing isn't supported for texture baking

[Kzin]

why you need the pbr mode to bake textures? that makes no sense for me. simple texture baking is independent from a physical plausible rendering approach.
my question is what you want to bake that needs a pbr approach for a texture which is baked? and what advances you are expecting when using the pbr mode instead of micropolygon or raytracing for your baked textures?

[NNois]

why you need the pbr mode to bake textures? that makes no sense for me. simple texture baking is independent from a physical plausible rendering approach.
my question is what you want to bake that needs a pbr approach for a texture which is baked? and what advances you are expecting when using the pbr mode instead of micropolygon or raytracing for your baked textures?

Well in my case, for a full virtual studio where we need a single layer of texture, mostly for the lightning solution, i need raytracing obviously and this is not allowed on houdini !

[Werner]

Some nice tools on the horizon. Softimage Tweak tool right in Houdini!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yaHF5_e ... e=youtu.be

[MauricioPC]

Some nice tools on the horizon. Softimage Tweak tool right in Houdini!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yaHF5_e ... e=youtu.be

That's pretty cool! Is it a plugin?