Michael Kirylo Correct about usd I’m talking about Solaris. I don’t want to jump into another context and build all my lighting look dev there and loose all my attributes / connections to Houdini. Just seems like Houdini as an authoring tool is being left behind . Unless I’m missing something . Will karma ever replace mantra? Or is the plan to just not be able to render from obj level in the future ? Main thing for me I I don’t want to deal with layers and the way my obj are named and structured that’s why I left maya in the first place .
Considered all the new lookdev/lighting tools are only implemented in /stage but not /obj, we should feel lucky if SideFX doesn't just retire /obj and force everyone to use /stage in 2~3 versions. Sigh.
apprenticeuser where Sidefx seemed to give-up on the plan and start stickytaping kinda-interoperable 3rd-party tech to its application, much like 3DSMax after it was sold and passed-around. This doesn't diminish its usefulness, but still disappointing.
You were disappointed to get OpenEXR, OpenVDB, Alembic, OpenSubdiv etc etc? Those are all free to use open source industry standards, not really 3rd-party tech (which to me at least means paid-for closed source). Reinventing the wheel isn't smart imo, especially when the wheel you would be competing against has had decades of engineering effort, millions of dollars of investment, and is free to use.
not the same issue he is refering to the render engine. autodesk did the same thing until they purchased arnold then took like 5 years to port it into max . max users had to purchase a functional 3rd party render engine to use max , usd is not the issue its forcing everyone to use solaris since sidefx is no longer supporting houdini as an authoring tool. Mantra is no longer supported so the only option is to purchase a 3rd party renderer if you want anything modern with support. IDK what the other formats have to do with any of this. I dont want to have a to take my full crowd setup and port in into solaris now just to be able to render with the newer suported render engine. its not trivial to move pipeline tools and workflows it cost money and time. and I think its just a crappy move on their part. just so they can say "look how successfull solaris is " well yeah no shit. Arguing about usd is not the point of the thread. would be ok if i could just obj merge into a lop and then render but you cant you have to know about the pixar usd workflow and you have to pay attention to the scene graph and how things are named / layered and all the rules to usd in order for things to render. being forced to have to get into all of that sucks is my point. I am perfectly happy using houdini for 98% of everything I have no need to port data anywhere we dont have sep departments we are all generalist for the most part.Everyone I know dislikes solaris and just feels bullied into using it. we have a ton of hda assets and tools already . why do i need to rework our entire pipeline ? solaris to me is the same vibes as lightwave . modler / layout ..
The only benefit I can see from my Generalist workflow is that USD and MaterialX is native on Apple so when I build things that work in the Stage, on the most part, they will probably run on device for real-time rendering and work in any Apple native application like Apple TV, presentations, etc.
Edited by PHENOMDESIGN - Aug. 9, 2024 20:01:46
PHENOM(enological) DESIGN; Experimental phenomenology (study of experience) is a category of philosophy evidencing intentional variations of subjective human experiencing where both the independent and dependent variable are phenomenological. Lundh 2020
Michael Kirylo "if i could just obj merge into a lop and then render "
you can do this for the most part, I've my gripes with USD but if you want to avoid it you absolutely can, I would love to hear what difficulties you have had simply bringing the scene right into Solaris?
In my experience, basically, layout and animation is were Solaris really gets complicated, but if you do everything in Houdini then just send it over to Solaris for rendering is pretty straight forward.
