We've been researching USD + MaterialX workflows for some time as part of our pipeline development, and we’re now focusing on renderer support—specifically how Houdini/Karma handle this setup. We’ve gone through available documentation and community discussions, but still have a few questions we were hoping you could help clarify.
In particular:
- Which MaterialX shading models are currently supported by Karma(Standard Surface, USDPreviewSurface, Disney principled, gltf PBR, OpenPBR)?
- If one or more are supported, is one shading model recommended when working with Karma? For example, is Standard Surface preferred in terms of compatibility, rendering quality, or performance?
- In case of supporting more than one shading model, how is compatibility handled between them? When rendering materials authored with different shading models, when they are converted to Karma internal nodes, are parameters like IOR preserved accurately?
Any clarification or documentation you can point us to would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks in advance,