For example, say I make a procedural texture with some VOPs, and connect it to a Principle Shader's base color. And I assign the material to an object. And then it doesn't work as I expect.

Naturally I'd like to see the base color on the object only, without lighting, without metallic/roughness/etc, and I want to see it as quick as possible. What's the correct approach for Karma?

Bump. There should be a way to view texture on the mesh, right...?

raincole
For example, say I make a procedural texture with some VOPs, and connect it to a Principle Shader's base color. And I assign the material to an object. And then it doesn't work as I expect.

Naturally I'd like to see the base color on the object only, without lighting, without metallic/roughness/etc, and I want to see it as quick as possible. What's the correct approach for Karma?

With VEX shaders in karma, such as principled shader, the pattern can be assigned as the material by moving the material flag from the principled shader to the pattern.

For materialX shaders, the visualizer can be used. Press X and click on a pattern node--although this seems to be working incorrectly in the current version of Houdini. For now, connect the pattern to the emissive input of the material.

jsmack
For materialX shaders, the visualizer can be used. Press X and click on a pattern node--although this seems to be working incorrectly in the current version of Houdini. For now, connect the pattern to the emissive input of the material.

Could you elaborate this a bit more? I reassigned "X" key to another function. I googled Houdini visualizer but all I got is the SOP level attribute visualizer. MaterialX's document [www.sidefx.com] doesn't mention visualizer either.

Edit: Oh I got it, you meant Visualize VOP? But how is it to be used to show a material...? The document only says it exports some attribute...

raincole
Edit: Oh I got it, you meant Visualize VOP? But how is it to be used to show a material...? The document only says it exports some attribute...

Yes, the visualize vop. Holding the X key activates the volatile state for visualizing the next clicked node. This works in VOPs and SOPs. For MaterialX shaders, it creates a temporary emissive material visualizing the connected value. It's currently creating a standard material with basecolor visualizing the connected node rather than emission. When it's working correctly it will use a pure constant material. If you assigned 'X' to something else, you can unassign that one and reassign it back again under Houdini->Panes->Network Editor->Visualize Output

replace your mtlx standard surface with a unlit surface, link your pattern into it.