The Marmoset Toolbag ROP Houdini Digital Asset (HDA) is a new ROP that allows for rendering geometry and shaders from Houdini to the .mview format, or to a frame range of images. This allows the user to quickly see geometry and shaders made in Houdini in a realtime PBR renderer. The tool features multiple parameters, allowing for a multitude of applications. In order to use the tool, a Marmoset Toolbag 3 license is required.


Important

To use this tool, you need a working version of Marmoset Toolbag 3.


General Settings

Under the rendering settings tab, the user can specify a camera and geometry to be used for the rendering process in Toolbag. The Frame range settings will currently only affect the rendering of static images and a sequence of frames. It will not control animations used in the mview viewer.

Under the general settings tab, the user is able to control the background preset included with Toolbag, or decide to use a custom image, when the "Use Custom" toggle is enabled. The Marmoset Parameter should point to the toolbag executable on your machine. It will look at the default install location, meaning this should be adjusted when Toolbag has been installed somewhere else.

MView Generation

One of the output modes for this HDA is the MView export. This mode allows for MView generations from within Houdini. Simply set the desired output path, and hit render. 

Depending on the state of the "Open Marmoset Viewer after Export" toggle, Houdini will also open the newly generated MView file. The generated MView can then be uploaded to for example ArtStation.


Image / Sequence Render

The second output mode for this HDA is the Image Render. This mode allows for rendering images and sequences of images with Marmoset Toolbag based on the provided inputs. The user needs to specify what camera should be used. (None will result in default view) And which geometry needs to be rendered. 

The user also gets control over several rendering settings such as resolution, sampling amount, background transparency and frame range.




CREATED BY

PAUL AMBROSIUSSEN

Paul Ambrosiussen is currently a Technical Artist at Bismuth Consultancy. He was the Lead of the Labs initiative at SideFX before that. Paul finished his BASc in International Game Architecture and Design at NHTV University of Applied Sciences in Breda. Paul enjoys writing tools to support effective art-pipelines, and maintaining tool / workflow quality for the artists he is assisting. His goal is to help others create amazing things in a better, faster and more flexible way. He creates tutorials, gives live lectures, attends events, and presents custom workshops to customers.

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