I am a learner of Houdini! I know that there is an image file format called rla which can give max user quite a lot of information! Such as objectId, materialId, depth data………… I think it is very powerful!

Can houdini read or generate RLA? Or can Houdini do the similar job with another way?

thank You for your attention!

of course, since RLA is open format and supported by Houdini you can use it inside Houdini. But just from definition of RLA does not follow that it have to be used to bring you info about surfaceID or any other. What is specific about RLA id that it does not have defined number of channels - which means that you can pipe-in it any number and any information you want… or your renderer/shader can.
Mantra can bring you in rla (or few others formats) some variabels, try deep-raster tab in Mantra ROP. If you need some others data you will have to write shader which will define it and write down in variable.

hope this will help,
symek

can I use renderman to make the RLA files?

I don't think so, but it does not mean, that you can't output from Rman such data as you want. Look in Rman doc for details.

SYmek
Mantra can bring you in rla (or few others formats) some variabels, try deep-raster tab in Mantra ROP. If you need some others data you will have to write shader which will define it and write down in variable.

Hiya,
I probably just misunderstood, but, Deep Raster is not supported in the RLA, does it?

THanks,
Alex

yes, it is a misuderstanding:
rla is a kind of image format which does not specify a number of channels/plates: Discreet uses this ability to pipe into rla files shade pasess and some (maybe useful ? ) data like surfaceID. Deepraster is a internal data of renderer which can be exported to any image format (which support correct type of data - integer, float etc…).

Deepraster in Houdini can export data also to rla. Rla can store deepraster data in the same way as colour, alfa etc, etc.

ok?
cheers,
symek.

thank you all! I will check the “deepraster” out soon!