hey you guys,

is there a way to render glass or basicliquid
without growing a beard?!
(and without disabling refractions altogether)?

thanks in advance!!

cheers,
ralf

I don't know if this is the reply you want, but I render almost everything in blender.
It's pretty painful to get your geo into blender, but not as painful as watching mantra render refraction

For most geo you can use an obj with a mdd cache

For changing topology you can alembic to max and then use this tool to go to blender
http://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?390636-Addon-Blembic-Mesh-Cache-that-supports-varying-vertex-count [blenderartists.org]
We are working on a houdini exporter for this tool, but it's not done yet.

Cameras we alembic to maya, and DAE them to blender.
Sometime you need to rotate the camera, or objects 90 in x, but it works.
We are also working on a houdini solution for this

We are also trying to get vdb from houdini to blender, but this is still a bit of a problem.

This workflow has saved me on a few projects.

Once we have a working tool, we will post it on these forums, but untill then, you can get most of your renders done with the workflow described above.

Like I said, not the answer you were looking for, but it does work.
G

hey Gerbrand,

thank you for taking the time
( + sorry it took me so long to get back here ).

It can be pretty painful ,
let´s see how it compares to the experience of getting things over… .

An Exporter would be Convenience with a capital C, of course,
but the approach you describe should already work well for my scene
(some glass beakers with organic tissue solids flopping around in them).

I´ll give it a try (and probably a yell if I get stuck) .

So tnx again (a dozen) + good luck with your work,
I´ll stay tuned…

cheers!
ralf

hi
i actualy enjoy mantra new materials
these are results
http://zoranarizanovic.blogspot.nl/2015/04/mantra-houdini-glass.html [zoranarizanovic.blogspot.nl]

i also compiled jeff wagners pbr instructions in a pdf this got me started for better more efficient sampling
check attachment
and search glass on odforce