Hi,

before I changed to Houdini I was over 14 Years a Mayauser and was used to download different shader librarys as a starting point for own development.

I dont find anything similliar in the web for Houdini. Any suggestions?

Thank you in advance.

Cheers

huschi
Hi,

before I changed to Houdini I was over 14 Years a Mayauser and was used to download different shader librarys as a starting point for own development.

I dont find anything similliar in the web for Houdini. Any suggestions?

Thank you in advance.

Cheers

I don't think, that there are many shader libraries for mantra available. You can find some shaders at http://www.orbolt.com/ [orbolt.com]

IMHO this is one of the major issues I find with Houdini, it forces you in the material development to go down to build your own pretty much every time and the current implementation does not really bring a simple shader library like the one you are used to use, let alone a more advanced one like the one in Softimage, Maxwell or Modo.

Furthermore, the lack of a general purpose shader that tackles 99% of the work required is horrible, a true annoying approach.

BUT MAY BE THIS CAN HELP

http://www.orbolt.com/asset/_danylyon::PBR_layered_material [orbolt.com]

at least looks serious enough.

hope it helps

huschi
Hi,

before I changed to Houdini I was over 14 Years a Mayauser and was used to download different shader librarys as a starting point for own development.

I dont find anything similliar in the web for Houdini. Any suggestions?

Thank you in advance.

Cheers

Yep, its leaking. Well on the other side you have to dive into creating Shaders and will learn a lot again. Just the time….

Thanks for your hint.

Cheers

I concur.
The default Mantra surface material is nice but still lacks a lot of common options such as layering.

This is an ongoing weak point, and for some reason it keeps being put down on SESI´s priority list. It would be a major factor for many people trying to decide whether to have a Houdini-based pipeline.

They better tackle this fast because it is becoming a really difficult thing to justify.

They don't even need to invent anything, just follow the steps of both Arnold and Vray and everything will be fine in no time.

Netvudu
I concur.
The default Mantra surface material is nice but still lacks a lot of common options such as layering.

This is an ongoing weak point, and for some reason it keeps being put down on SESI´s priority list. It would be a major factor for many people trying to decide whether to have a Houdini-based pipeline.

I am not sure how you come to that conclusion, sure its lacking but there's nothing stopping you making your own “simple”shaders to get the job done. When you consider the mess that is Maya and the requirement of 3rd party mel scripts just to do basic operations. Basing a decision to opt for a application solely on “shaders” would be extremely foolish.

Rob

Hopefully in 13, maybe there are minor changes

Truthfully as a long time Maya user, vray, mray whatever…the shader development in Houdini far surpasses what you can do in either vray or mray, especially in Maya. As far as layered shaders go you have to jump through hoops to get this to work correctly in mray and in Houdini it is a very simple task. Vray blend material is a little better but still…

As well, I can not imagine what my life would be like if I could not integrate something like vops/vex and pass attributes down the line into the shading pipeline.

I don't think that making a preset for blurry metal or matte shading so you have some kind of mia_material preset thing is the point or in fact that difficult either. Most of the same values and theory apply.

My guess is that people switching over to houdini don't fully grasp how to build shaders with vops. Taking that into account it is much easier to shade something in Vray straight out-of-the-box than in houdini. However, when you get past that learning curve and know how to build your shaders - I believe it is much more easier and powerful to build a shader in houdini.

I myself don't really know that much about building your own shader yet, the default mantra surface is a pain to decode and learn from. So, I do agree some sort of basic material library would be great for learning purposes.

As with almost everything in Houdini, once you learn it you don't go back

What would be more interesting would be if ShOps had the architecture to allow a link to Vray, Maya or Modo shaders. Maybe it could be implemented like an ‘alembic’ style format to transfer shaders between programs.

circusmonkey
I am not how you come to that conclusion, sure its lacking but there's nothing stopping you making your own “simple”shaders to get the job done. When you consider the mess that is Maya and the requirement of 3rd party mel scripts just to do basic operations. Basing a decision to opt for a application solely on “shaders” would be extremely foolish.

Rob

Nobody is basing that decision “solely” on shaders, but I think you´ll agree with me your final output is the key point when delivering. I once met a TD who told me an interesting thing : “your pipeline is your render engine”. The key decision when deciding what to use is many times how to render that out.

I teach students that get into Houdini after almost 2 years learning VFX and they already know how to get fair quality with several render engines. I´m not saying that they hit a brick wall with Mantra, but they certainly find several problems when facing it.
I teach them SHOPs, VOPs and ROPs, and by the end of the year they have a good grasp of it and know how to get quality out of it. That doesn´t excuse the sheer amount of time they had to spend to get there.
Nobody is complaining about the flexibility Mantra gives. That´s good.
There´s simply no excuse to having good default production-level materials on the stock product, or at least give a really simple access to them.

I´ll give you a valid comparison. Did you hear anybody complain about FX presets on the shelf? Does the Billowy Smoke or RBD Fracture, or Glue Network (glue adjacent), or whitewater options bother you at all? I can also create them from scratch (well, most of them. Whitewater is a treat) but they certainly save LOTS of time.
Well, it´s exactly the same thing with shaders. Having them already there, would save A HUGE lot of time that you might or might not have in production.

Why do you think Mantra Surface is there? Because SESI knows it´s important to have that kind of shaders. It´s only the time being devoted to create them ain´t enough.
Why is the pyro shader there? Because creating the same kind of quality in a shader requires an amount of shading knowledge above the average user, and nobody knows everything about every area of VFX.
I have used volumetrics before that shader was there, and it was obviously possible to get good quality…only now, it´s even easier. Don´t you agree?

Netvudu
Nobody is basing that decision “solely” on shaders, but I think you´ll agree with me your final output is the key point when delivering. I once met a TD who told me an interesting thing : “your pipeline is your render engine”. The key decision when deciding what to use is many times how to render that out.

Can you expand on that concept - “your pipeline is your render engine”? It seams simplistic, apparently loaded with meaning but it really a hollow statement. aka corporate speak

Well, I don´t agree with the concept 100% but I do agree to a point. The concept being, there are many ways to do stuff nowadays on CGI, but excellent final quality as fast as possible ain´t that easy while being clearly the vital aspect of the whole thing on most projects.

If you know how you will render the final thing, ON YOUR BUDGET, on a level that satisfies you, then that decision might very well drive the rest of your decisions regarding pipeline.

But I know that´s just one way to look at it.

Interesting; sounds like a pipeline built ‘top-down’, the render considered first and plugging components into it. I wonder how ‘bottom-up’ pipelines look different, where they consider the inputs to be most important.

MartybNz
Interesting; sounds like a pipeline built ‘top-down’, the render considered first and plugging components into it. I wonder how ‘bottom-up’ pipelines look different, where they consider the inputs to be most important.

Which how a pipeline should be designed.
The render engine is the only tool in your chain that needs
to process all the data to deliver the final image to comp.
So yes, better take a decision about the tender engine before
consider any other stage of the pipe later.
And returning to this thread topic.
I don't believe Mantra Surface is so far from Vray or Arnold
“Out of the box shaders”, at least is not the impression
I have after talking with our lighters.
I am not saying it needs to improve, but for me the real problem
Is how you fill the gap between TDs and lighters.
And this basically means that forcing lighters to go into
VOPs to make simple things like adding a new texture map to the material
Is not good. You need an easy way to add simple modifiers to
materials, and leave VOPs only for the hard stuff.
Said that, honestly, I haven't seen mantra shading a major hurdle
in production.

From the point of view of FX I understand your point, you need the flexibility to bend it backwards.

But the important argument and the reason I am putting a bit of time writing this is because;

I should be able to, I should not be forced to

which is the kind of thing I feel Sidefx are embracing (thanks) and the kind of thing all the new users come to expect and demand.

It is not I want anyone to remove the possibility of getting your hands dirty, is that I really feel I should not battle away little tiny things any simple 3rd rate 3D package does out of the box and Houdini does not.

We have a great tool, great render engine, sub-standard material/shader set, not much to ask I think to improve that by providing, like Arnold, a solid standard shader and utility shader that get us to produce much faster and better, something that I am sure the community will appreciate as suddenly the user base will grow and flourish.

If SideFX does not, a lot of people will take the “foolish” decision that makes economic and practical sense at the expense of everything else and you know what? it won't be the end of the world as for the last 20 years has been constantly proved.

Let's never forget VHS won against BETACAM please

jb

circusmonkey

Netvudu
I concur.
The default Mantra surface material is nice but still lacks a lot of common options such as layering.

This is an ongoing weak point, and for some reason it keeps being put down on SESI´s priority list. It would be a major factor for many people trying to decide whether to have a Houdini-based pipeline.

I am not sure how you come to that conclusion, sure its lacking but there's nothing stopping you making your own “simple”shaders to get the job done. When you consider the mess that is Maya and the requirement of 3rd party mel scripts just to do basic operations. Basing a decision to opt for a application solely on “shaders” would be extremely foolish.

Rob

The render scene description is the only place where all packages get together, therefore becoming the perfect place to edit the scene and abstract as much as possible.

Isn't this the whole point of RIB files? a unified scene description?

If that is what someone calls “pipeline” is ok although I would call it something else.

jb

MartybNz

Netvudu
Nobody is basing that decision “solely” on shaders, but I think you´ll agree with me your final output is the key point when delivering. I once met a TD who told me an interesting thing : “your pipeline is your render engine”. The key decision when deciding what to use is many times how to render that out.

Can you expand on that concept - “your pipeline is your render engine”? It seams simplistic, apparently loaded with meaning but it really a hollow statement. aka corporate speak

I think this is pure technical limitation issue, not philosophical or - God forbid - negligence. You really can't make decent Material Editor* (this is how I understand Jordi's request) in context of how currently Mantra and Houdini interface.

I'm pretty sure SESI is aware of it. Best they could do was the mantra material, which considered as a static entity, is technologically advanced beyond a level most people could achieve - it's simple not a material you can artistically direct.

The whole Vops business needs revamp, something that hopefully will come with co-shaders. The challenge I see in GUI though. I really don't see a room for artist friendly material editing with current Houdini's widgets.

* - Vop networks are in contrast material definitions

I guess is a evolution on the already existing toolset and making sure there is a one-stop solution available where to build from. Something you can edit (great) but that provides all the basic functionality we need on almost every single job.

The best example would be Arnold's Standard shader, from then you can build on top, you can do almost anything you need with it making it an army swiss knife and making the shading a truly fun process.

Multi-layering? well, give me 4 layers and I will be happy.. ;-)

Hope it makes sense

SYmek
I think this is pure technical limitation issue, not philosophical or - God forbid - negligence. You really can't make decent Material Editor* (this is how I understand Jordi's request) in context of how currently Mantra and Houdini interface.

I'm pretty sure SESI is aware of it. Best they could do was the mantra material, which considered as a static entity, is technologically advanced beyond a level most people could achieve - it's simple not a material you can artistically direct.

The whole Vops business needs revamp, something that hopefully will come with co-shaders. The challenge I see in GUI though. I really don't see a room for artist friendly material editing with current Houdini's widgets.

* - Vop networks are in contrast material definitions