I'm making good progress learning the new Karma workflow, but there are two things I'm stuck on:

- The LOPs Dome Light doesn't have a “render light geometry” checkbox and so I'm getting black backgrounds in my test renders.

- I'm not able to send Karma output to MPlay. Choosing mplay (interactive) (“ip”) in the Output Picture box either does nothing or sends me to a blank MPlay window in which nothing ever happens.

Any help is appreciated!

I was going to ask about the mplay render also or some way to lock a preview to the resolution output.

To render to mplay, put ‘ip’ for the output path of the render product on the karma settings. You'll have to make sure only the beauty is enabled, as mplay cannot yet display multipart exrs.

Render delegates can interactively render to a locked resolution when switching to image view from persp view (space-5 in the viewport. Same key as switching to uv view in sops)

jsmack
To render to mplay, put ‘ip’ for the output path of the render product on the karma settings. You'll have to make sure only the beauty is enabled, as mplay cannot yet display multipart exrs.

No luck. MPlay pops up after the render finishes with nothing more than a black image. I tried a bunch of different AOV options (just beauty under LPE, just diffuse, etc.) with no success. I'm able to save out a PIC or EXR just fine, so there seems to be some issue with the MPlay workflow in my case.

Update: the latest daily build fixes the MPlay problem… sort of. Karma now sends the render to MPlay, including all AOVs, but it just saves the whole thing out, then opens in MPlay at completion. That's not so great if you want to keep tabs on how the render is progressing.

Still have no clue how to get a dome light to render. An HDRI lights the scene just fine and shows in the viewport, but it's invisible come render time.

BrianHanke
Update: the latest daily build fixes the MPlay problem… sort of. Karma now sends the render to MPlay, including all AOVs, but it just saves the whole thing out, then opens in MPlay at completion. That's not so great if you want to keep tabs on how the render is progressing.

Interactive rendering can only be done in the viewport currently. The checkpoint interval (usd render node) should let you see the progress periodically. The default is 300 seconds. I'm not sure if it works when rendering to mplay though.

BrianHanke
Still have no clue how to get a dome light to render. An HDRI lights the scene just fine and shows in the viewport, but it's invisible come render time.

It's not possible to enable light visibility yet. Some delegates are the opposite, you can't hide the lights. I'm guessing this is pending a usd spec, or maybe it will be a karma light api at some point in the future.

jsmack
Interactive rendering can only be done in the viewport currently. The checkpoint interval (usd render node) should let you see the progress periodically. The default is 300 seconds. I'm not sure if it works when rendering to mplay though.

It's not possible to enable light visibility yet. Some delegates are the opposite, you can't hide the lights. I'm guessing this is pending a usd spec, or maybe it will be a karma light api at some point in the future.

Good info, thank you!

Hi, my post will maybe sound as a rant, so let me first appreciate the effort Sidefx have put into developing this new LOP context and Karma. I think the general idea of LOPs is great and having Karma is exciting, but right now it needs more work I think, before everybody will be able to use it in production. Fingers crossed

So after some testing, I've got some feedback and a few additional questions to those already answered:

1 - Apart of mplay support, does anybody know whether there is going to be any sort of more dedicated render window, similar to Render view? I mean it has all sorts of convenience functions, like region render, mouse tracking, ROPs list, Cameras list, progressive render on/off, auto-update switcher, pixel inspector, and others. All this seems to gone away with rendering through viewport. Is Image view (Space+5) supposed to become that? Right now it doesn't offer any additional functionality compared to viewport.

2 - This is not exactly a Karma question, but I don't understand the LOPs camera. It's different from SOP Camera, and I find the LOP one very inconvenient to work with right now due to some bizzare controls (or maybe a lack of it). Am I missing something here? Is LOP camera going to be improved significantly? I can still import my camera from SOPs but that seems to be broken right now (when you move the imported cam view it breaks it). On top of this, the resolution is dialed in Karma not on camera which is not great in my opinion. What I am missing are especially these things - a convenient way to set the image aspect ratio and standard image formats, separate zoom control, crop region, rendered resolution, different projections (panoramic, etc.). Of course, a bit more modern take on camera would be very appreciated - physical controls (ISO, exposure, white ballance…) and a nice collection of lens shaders (glows, flares, etc) would be more than welcome.

3 - How you do ray contributions and ray limits with Karma? I figured all this is supposed to be controlled per object with Render geometry settings LOP, but it doesn't seem to do anything. Broken?

4 - How can you get verbose? There is a statistics tab but right now it doesn't seem to do anything (on Windows). Also, it'd be great to have switchers for different things to show up in verbose rather than a slider. I mean, I might wanna just see a texture handling info and nothing else for example. Not sure if that's feasible to do but would be great to have.

6 - Could Render scheduler become a bit more useful? I mean, It alwas pretty much only told you that something is rendering. What about some more functionality, like estimated time remaining for the frame/job? Or maybe a clickable path where the output goes? Or a click to open sequence in mplay?

7 - I presume features like LUTs support, cryptomatte, render scripts, image overscan, image filters, auto-folder creation, render missing/invalid frames, etc. are not there yet, but will be soon?

8 - Given how things have changed now, is OUT context become eventually obsolete and removed, alongside with Mantra?

9 - How dependency/chained renders, or generally complex render scenarios, are (will) be implemented into LOPs?

10 - Is Texture baker gonna be translated into Karma world?

Well that's a bit more questions than I thought I'll ask at the beginning, but that's what I'm wondering about in terms of rendering with Karma. Some of those things are just a convenience features, but alongside with a new renderer I was a bit hopeful that some annoying persistent old Mantra quirks will go away in favor of a bit more modern user experience. Others are absolutely critical for me to even consider using Karma as a production renderer (which I'd very much like to).

Cheers, D.

David Pekarek
1 - Apart of mplay support, does anybody know whether there is going to be any sort of more dedicated render window, similar to Render view? I mean it has all sorts of convenience functions, like region render, mouse tracking, ROPs list, Cameras list, progressive render on/off, auto-update switcher, pixel inspector, and others. All this seems to gone away with rendering through viewport. Is Image view (Space+5) supposed to become that? Right now it doesn't offer any additional functionality compared to viewport.

There are long term plans to improve the Solaris viewport to make it have function similar to the RenderView (with snapshots, etc.)

David Pekarek
2 - This is not exactly a Karma question, but I don't understand the LOPs camera. It's different from SOP Camera, and I find the LOP one very inconvenient to work with right now due to some bizzare controls (or maybe a lack of it). Am I missing something here? Is LOP camera going to be improved significantly? I can still import my camera from SOPs but that seems to be broken right now (when you move the imported cam view it breaks it). On top of this, the resolution is dialed in Karma not on camera which is not great in my opinion. What I am missing are especially these things - a convenient way to set the image aspect ratio and standard image formats, separate zoom control, crop region, rendered resolution, different projections (panoramic, etc.). Of course, a bit more modern take on camera would be very appreciated - physical controls (ISO, exposure, white ballance…) and a nice collection of lens shaders (glows, flares, etc) would be more than welcome.

A lot of the camera settings are defined by the USD camera: https://graphics.pixar.com/usd/docs/api/class_usd_geom_camera.html [graphics.pixar.com] Each renderer can add their own “custom” controls. It's quite possible in the future, renderers will provide their own HDAs to provide a “nicer” interface to cameras.

David Pekarek
3 - How you do ray contributions and ray limits with Karma? I figured all this is supposed to be controlled per object with Render geometry settings LOP, but it doesn't seem to do anything. Broken?

Yes, the Render Geometry Settings LOP is supposed to set these limits. If it's not working properly, please submit a bug with a simple test case.

David Pekarek
4 - How can you get verbose? There is a statistics tab but right now it doesn't seem to do anything (on Windows). Also, it'd be great to have switchers for different things to show up in verbose rather than a slider. I mean, I might wanna just see a texture handling info and nothing else for example. Not sure if that's feasible to do but would be great to have.

The display options has a way to turn on render stats (in the Guides tab). Render time should be in the upper left. There's additional verbosity options in the command line renderer.

David Pekarek
6 - Could Render scheduler become a bit more useful? I mean, It alwas pretty much only told you that something is rendering. What about some more functionality, like estimated time remaining for the frame/job? Or maybe a clickable path where the output goes? Or a click to open sequence in mplay?

David Pekarek
7 - I presume features like LUTs support, cryptomatte, render scripts, image overscan, image filters, auto-folder creation, render missing/invalid frames, etc. are not there yet, but will be soon?

Some of these should be here (image overscan, filters, OCIO support), some are in the works (cryptomatte, render scripts, auto-folder creation, missing/invalid frames, checkpoint resuming etc.). All features will be receiving UI/workflow improvements (it's not exactly easy to find out how to add OCIO LUTs is it?

David Pekarek
8 - Given how things have changed now, is OUT context become eventually obsolete and removed, alongside with Mantra?

We will continue to support mantra. We still use the output context for saving USD and starting batch renders from LOPs.

David Pekarek
9 - How dependency/chained renders, or generally complex render scenarios, are (will) be implemented into LOPs?

That's a good question

David Pekarek
10 - Is Texture baker gonna be translated into Karma world?

In the long run - but not likely for H18.0.

Alright, thanks for your answers Mark, I'll stay tuned for the future development.

Since there is a lot good info here I am gonna take this chance to ask about AOVs, I notice that in Karma we have this AOV tab that we can store some of them but how about the “old” outputs in the shader? Can I still have them stored? If so how?

mark

David Pekarek
1 - Apart of mplay support, does anybody know whether there is going to be any sort of more dedicated render window, similar to Render view? I mean it has all sorts of convenience functions, like region render, mouse tracking, ROPs list, Cameras list, progressive render on/off, auto-update switcher, pixel inspector, and others. All this seems to gone away with rendering through viewport. Is Image view (Space+5) supposed to become that? Right now it doesn't offer any additional functionality compared to viewport.

There are long term plans to improve the Solaris viewport to make it have function similar to the RenderView (with snapshots, etc.)

Little tip, maybe? I found out that you can have a half solution for this if you enable the “memory tool bar” you can use the snapshot to save your renders and even compare them the only feature missing is the ability to save on disk, I hope that helps.

I’d like to check in with this.

Particularly regarding camera controls. Photographic exposure, overexposure desaturation and some basic effects like bloom/streak would go a long way. Are they on the horizon?

tomwcutler
Particularly regarding camera controls. Photographic exposure, overexposure desaturation and some basic effects like bloom/streak would go a long way. Are they on the horizon?

Solaris already has the camera exposure control, but the rest are not always renderer integrated effects as they are applied to the completed framebuffer. Overexposure desaturation is part of the output display transform which is implemented by the color pipeline, which Houdini has support for via OCIO. Bloom and other similar effects are post process 2D effects that are typical of compositing software. Whether or not Houdini will have any compositing effects integrated into Solaris, we'll see.

jsmack

tomwcutler
Whether or not Houdini will have any compositing effects integrated into Solaris, we'll see.

Thanks dude but I knew all that - I was just curious if these have been listed somewhere as upcoming features. Coming from Redshift, having these tools available in dcc are a lifesaver. We can skip comp for 90% of our concept works and that's priceless. I realise I'm the minority here, but still, I'm curious. Cheers!