GPU rendering for free?



Available at
https://github.com/GPUOpen-LibrariesAndSDKs/RadeonProRenderUSD/releases [github.com]

Post any issues in the github issues page!

a little bit of documentation would be helpful. I was very keen to try it out, so installed, but can't find it in Houdini.
Should I edit env file? Should it appear automatically under “render delegates”? I can see only “Houdini GL”, “Karma (beta)”, “Storm”. Were you able to run it? if yes, can you please share the workflow? Thanks!

Yes Install instructions are on the github page. It should show up in the viewport renderer options after installed. Was there any issue running the install script?

Also Other's have mentioned Apprentice versions don't let you run plugins, but I haven't tested this myself.

Install script went without errors. It looks like H18 has some weird indie license bug, and sets it to apprentice version. Probably this is the reason Pro Render doesn’t show up. Sadly have to wait for a few days.

brokenkeyframe
Install script went without errors. It looks like H18 has some weird indie license bug, and sets it to apprentice version. Probably this is the reason Pro Render doesn’t show up. Sadly have to wait for a few days.

Ah ok. I assume SideFX is aware of this. Let me know the resolution.

I was able to download, install, and use RPR without issue, inside of Apprentice as well as a full commercial version, running the release build. I had some issues with normals appearing wrong rendering the standard Pixar kitchen scene, but in general it worked well for me.

There is no explicit disallowing of third party renderers in the viewport with Apprentice. The issue referred to I thought was that rendering with Karma from within an Indie Houdini would downgrade that Houdini session to Apprentice (and indeed that bug is being worked on, but as I understand it, it should not affect any other third party renderers).

All that to say there might be something else going wrong in your setup?

Okay. so I installed the RPR:



Do I need to write paths to env file? Should it work as soon as I run houdini?
beause I coudn't find any other instructions, to make it work.

Nope. Should run without any other issues. So it doesn't show up in the delegates at all?

My only other thought is that it's not installing to the right location. We recently updated the release for macOS. Please try downloading the updated one from https://github.com/GPUOpen-LibrariesAndSDKs/RadeonProRenderUSD/releases [github.com]

It should say this when installing:

– Installing: /Applications/Houdini/Houdini18.0.287/Frameworks/Houdini.framework/Versions/Current/Resources/houdini/soho/parameters/HdRprPlugin_Viewport.ds
– Installing: /Applications/Houdini/Houdini18.0.287/Frameworks/Houdini.framework/Versions/Current/Libraries/libTahoe64.dylib
– Installing: /Applications/Houdini/Houdini18.0.287/Frameworks/Houdini.framework/Versions/Current/Libraries/libRadeonImageFilters64.dylib
…

If not can you file an issue on the github page?

Thank you bsavery! New version worked like charm!

Could you guys please provide a way to install via the Houdini package system? https://www.sidefx.com/docs/houdini/ref/plugins.html [www.sidefx.com]

Example: https://github.com/sideeffects/SideFXLabs/blob/Development/SideFXLabs.json [github.com]

Thanks!

I'm not sure usd plugins can be installed that way. They are dlls that live outside the HFS.

Ah I see. I didn't take a look into what it needs to install. That's a shame then.

jsmack
I'm not sure usd plugins can be installed that way. They are dlls that live outside the HFS.

Maybe Mark can answer that one?

Overall if there's a better way we to do the installer for these USD plugins easily we're all ears.

Some documentation or tutorials would be nice, I've installed it and it works in the viewport and I can render using the usdrender node but there is no equivalent to the karma node. How do we adjust pixel samples, de-noising etc?

FFD
equivalent to the karma node

Do you mean “Karma Render Properties”? If so then I can say that it's in my TODO list and I hope that I will do some sketch or even full implementation of it this month. But for now, you can use “Display Options”.

Up and running on Linux just fine. But, there's no documentation on how to use it in Houdini?

How do I add ProRender materials, like the UberShader?

Daryl Dunlap
Up and running on Linux just fine. But, there's no documentation on how to use it in Houdini?

How do I add ProRender materials, like the UberShader?

Looking at the source, I don't think it supports any materials other than the usd preview shader.

jsmack
Looking at the source, I don't think it supports any materials other than the usd preview shader.

Right, only UsdPreviewSurface material node is supported. Feel free to post feature request issue on github [github.com], we would discuss it there

I definitely want to make life easier for third party renderer installations. My current thinking involves automatically added a subdirectory under each HOUDINI_PATH entry to the USD plugin path. Thus it should be possible to install a third party renderer anywhere, and just instruct the user (or alter houdini.env) to add one directory to HOUDINI_PATH, and away you go. The HOUDINI_PATH modification is required to expose the renderer-specific render settings anyway, so this is already sort of the minimal modification to the user's environment.

I have been told that on some platforms houdini.env can successfully modify the USD plugin path, and on other platforms it can't, so that's one issue I'd have to address, as well as auto-editing the USD plugin path from the HOUDINI_PATH. Renderer plugins would need to be installed in a way that allows the USD plugin library to find any additional shared libraries it requires. But I would think that is possible with rpath on Linux/Mac and by putting additional DLLs in the same directory as the plugin DLL on Windows? Does this seem like a reasonable approach?

Well, any help here would be appreciated. For example, ProRender installed fine, but, it auto-installed to the H version that existed on the system, so, when I installed another H version, ProRender was not available on the newly installed H version.

Secondly, Arnold Delegate would not work at all. The Arnold render engine worked, and I went on GitHub and some are loggin bugs against Arnold Delegate, so it obviously works on Windows OS, but not on Linux, where I've been testing.

So, anything we can do to standardize this would be great. Also, alot of Delegates support USDPreviewSurface, but there isnt an easy way to stand up USD shaders for external engines, besides authoring C++ code. Blender is really nice in this space, as you can author shaders in Python which allows very fast coding iterations when maturing 3rd party engine integrations.