I've been having a hard time figure out how to work with volumes in Solaris, especially when it comes to rendering them via the Arnold Hydra plugin. I've figured out how to shade and render them for the normal Arnold IPR, but I can't get them to even show up in the Arnold Solaris viewport. Anyone have examples of the proper workflow for this?

As a side-note, I found other people with the issue on the Autodesk forums but they seem to think it's a Houdini or environment issue. However we're a shop with a pretty solid Houdini environment setup and are using 18.5 so I doubt that's it.

https://answers.arnoldrenderer.com/questions/25664/how-to-render-vdb-volumes-in-solaris.html [answers.arnoldrenderer.com]

you can write the VDB and use volume-node in solaris to load the vdb, assign volume etc. this should work.

That was the trick. Thanks! To bad that the SOP Import and SOP Create lops don't work for this.

NFX
That was the trick. Thanks! To bad that the SOP Import and SOP Create lops don't work for this.

Hey, its me, the same guy who answered the question on Arnold forums which you linked here.
SOP Create and SOP Import dont work with volumes,load the whole sequence with "file" LOP node instead.

FYI the "Arnold Standard Volume" shader in a Solaris material library must be connected to an Arnold "Material Output" node for it to bind correctly. This behavior is different to the Arnold Standard Surface shader, which can be output directly.

AhmedHindy
SOP Create and SOP Import dont work with volumes

Just wanted to clarify here... SOP Create and SOP Import do work with VDB and Houdini native volumes. At least they should. If you have a hip file demonstrating a case where they don't, please post it (either here or send an email to support@sidefx.com).

It's possible that they don't work in the viewport with Arnold, but they should be displaying properly with the Houdini GL and Karma renderers.

mtucker

AhmedHindy
SOP Create and SOP Import dont work with volumes

Just wanted to clarify here... SOP Create and SOP Import do work with VDB and Houdini native volumes. At least they should. If you have a hip file demonstrating a case where they don't, please post it (either here or send an email to support@sidefx.com).

It's possible that they don't work in the viewport with Arnold, but they should be displaying properly with the Houdini GL and Karma renderers.

sorry for the late reply, this SOP Import, Scene Import and all other methods work for rendering vdb in karma/ openGL, but Arnold (tested late versions of HtoA 6.2) doesnt work and will give you a blank viewport with zero errors.

only working method I know is the "Volumes" LOP to load the .vdb file sequence.

There is a youtube video with a hipfile from someone that recreated the standard pyro shaders.

https://youtu.be/kskWKXdSK5s [youtu.be]

I finally got volumes working in Solaris with Arnold but now I have a new issue.
I am trying to render particles as volumes. In the regular rop context this works perfectly fine, after setting the step size > 0 in the geo container arnold settings. If I do the same in solaris with the rendergeometrysettings node it doesn't work however.
Does anyone know how or if this even works in solaris?

Hi to all,
I've a question about it.
I would create an asset with component builder that has a volume inside it. in viewport works fine but not in render in arnold.
It's the same problem of SOP import and SOP create?
thankyou
19.5.435 and htoa 6.1.4.1