In this lesson, you will be introduced to Houdini's new context for lookdev, layout and lighting called LOPS. This new suite of tools is also known as Solaris and works together with the new Karma Render (beta).

CREATED BY

rohandalvi
ROHAN DALVI

Rohan has always been interested in film and animation which led him to life as a 3D artist. He was also passionate about teaching so he started his own “Institute for Advanced Animation.” He primarily concentrated on teaching software skills while working on design visualization, motion graphics, industrial animations and also some medical renderings. He then stumbled upon Houdini and the rest is history as his many Houdini tutorials have helped artists from around the world get into the world of proceduralism.

More from Rohan Dalvi

COMMENTS

  • Kwesikwaa 4 years, 12 months ago  | 

    Pretty simple, concise and straightforward. Big ups Rohan

  • soulcage_dpt 4 years, 11 months ago  | 

    really cool tutorial...
    how would be a randomize on textures work in lops? prior h18, i think, this is done with random string attributes pointing on a path on disk and stylesheets? but in lops?
    would be an interesting tutorial...

    • rohandalvi 4 years, 11 months ago  | 

      I will take a look into it.

      • Try Houdini 001 3 years, 7 months ago  | 

        Hi Rohan. I just finished the tutorial. But the "Point Attributes to Copy" technique doesn't work in the current version 18.5.532. It did work in the older version 18.0. 287 as in the tutorial. Is that a bug? Or things have changed in the new releases?

  • borrego 4 years, 11 months ago  | 

    Grate stuff Dude, i was wondering how all this usd things were applied, and this was like a fresh drink of water. Thanks for this.

  • borrego 4 years, 11 months ago  | 

    Great stuff Dude, i was wondering how all this usd things were applied, and this was like a fresh drink of water. Thanks for this.

  • OneBigTree 4 years, 11 months ago  | 

    How could I utilize LOPS to quickly set up render Layers (passes in Softimage)?


    Can I import multiple objects at once? Which parts can automated, like creating collections? When I select an object in the LOPS tree, can I jump quickly to its assigned material? or do I have to go through the material assign node every time?
    I can see how I can create overrides and such but the management overhead to set it all up seems pretty eating up the time it saves.


    Great tutorial but for a single end to end artist LOPS seems to create more work that it actually saves.

  • nkallen 4 years, 10 months ago  | 

    Hi Rohan,

    Around 28:30 in the video you put leaves on the stem of the flower. Each successive leaf is rotated ~90 degrees around the tangent of the curve of the stem... I struggled for a long while to figure out how to do this. I finally got a similar effect by messing with the "Additional Rotations" section in "Orientation Along Curve". Is this the right way to achieve the alternating leaves?

    • david_6 4 years, 9 months ago  | 

      Did you get the effect?I tried adjusting the Additional Rotations property, but it didn't work.

      • hooverisbad 3 years, 9 months ago  | 

        I put an Attribute Randomize between the Orient Along Curve and Copy To Points node (the one that also connects to the leaves). If you use the default attribute of ‘orient’ and set the Dimensions to 4 you should have control over the rotation values from that same node. I also pushed the grid a little off center and put a bend on it for funsies.

        • JocelynDaPrato 2 years, 11 months ago  | 

          Thx @hooverisbad, it's working. But from the @Rohan nodes, there's maybe hidden expression inside channels controls as from the AlongCurve one... ?

          • izzy_yangg 2 years, 9 months ago  | 

            You can turn on the additional rotation inside orientalongcurve. Make sure you also scroll down and turn on the output attribute - quaternion. You'll be able to rotate the leaves then.

  • gitterson 4 years, 9 months ago  | 

    You all are way more optimistic than I am. I was hoping to integrate these USD tools into our workflow. Hops? Pops? Tops? Don't have time to learn a secret code. Combine that with constant error messages while just trying to use the software...

    We certainly don't have time to take a master class on Houdini, but that appears to be what is required.

  • sebaberu 4 years, 6 months ago  | 

    Hi Rohan,
    About the leaves, could you explain in 2 words how to have them randomly rotated? I tried a twist on the stem, but it is not the same result...
    Thank you

    • haydilliams 4 years, 6 months ago  | 

      You can achieve that look by playing with the "Additional rotations" in the Orientation Along Curve. Specifically, by adjusting the "Full Twists" parameter under Apply Roll or Twist. The leaves will be randomly rotated, but they will be centered on the stem. You should use a transform node to slightly translate the grid away from the line, which will result in grids being randomly rotated around the line

  • flexx 4 years, 5 months ago  | 

    how to add the grid to the line as leaves?

  • Emil Rasmussen 4 years, 4 months ago  | 

    I have now watched all 5 episodes. Thanks a lot Rohan! :)

  • VisionaryMind 4 years, 4 months ago  | 

    This training, from start to finish, is a consummate train-wreck. Concepts which could be presented in a straightforward, logical way are thrown together in scenarios that do not remotely mirror real-life, production pipelines. Note to SideFX: if you are going to hire someone to introduce your product to new users, make sure they have experience applying their knowledge in real-world contexts. This material is obtuse, chaotic, and ultimately useless either as an introduction or even simply as an advertisement for the flexibility of your product. The examples actually make the product look convoluted and overly complex when, I am sure, in the right context and with proper presentation (by an artist), its capabilities could shine and you would gain greater recognition. You are scaring people away with this material. I cannot believe big studios are using these procedural techniques. Pig heads, rubber toys, and lights with differing intensity, color,, etc. in a single compact space? Who would even think of doing that?

  • Daniel Bull 4 years, 1 month ago  | 

    When I get to the randomize color of the flowers at the end it all stays black in my scene. Checked many times over but cannot figure where I've gone wrong. Maybe a bug? The randomize works with basecolor step, but the steps after that the flowers just are black. Anyone else get this?

    • Try Houdini 001 3 years, 7 months ago  | 

      Have you solved it? I got the same problem. Randomizing the "basecolor" works fine. But it doesn't work with the "flower" and "leaves" .

    • drjleggett 3 years, 5 months ago  | 

      I've been stuck for 2 days on this one. I have pinpointed the problem at the Attribute Randomize Node in the instance to points node.
      If I change the dimensions to something other than 3, the flower color changes (but not what we want). But as soon as you input 3 dimensions, it just keeps the default values (1 in this tutorial).

  • hooverisbad 3 years, 9 months ago  | 

    Working through the tutorial using Apprentice and getting a weird issue where we’ve imported the geometry into LOPs (Flowers A, B, and C), merged them, and then added the Instance To Points node under that. But, when I scrub the index, my ‘flowers’ don’t change and if I try to import any of the other subset groups aside from ‘flower’ I’m 100% guaranteed to crash. I’ve tried to follow the tutorial as closely as possible, but obviously the flower portion of this was intended to be a bit of an ‘on your own’ exercise leveraging knowledge from a previous tutorial. Not sure what I might have put in there to get it to crash so consistently by adding Subset Groups!

  • alanverenoff 3 years, 8 months ago  | 

    I totally agree with Visionary Mind. People directing SideFx company. These tutorial series is awful. Tutorials should be splitted into parts no longer than 20 minutes. And it would be better to use real life examples and scenarios. Nothing sympathetic in tutorial series.

    • karlikch 2 years, 5 months ago  | 

      :)

    • karlikch 2 years, 5 months ago  | 

      If you dont like these tutorials, dont watch them and dont write bullshits. its easy. Try blender, man. Wish You luck,

  • contactclay 3 years, 7 months ago  | 

    Randomizing the color of flowers and leaves doesn't work. Basecolor works for me. Bug?

    • rohandalvi 3 years, 7 months ago  | 

      Let me try and rebuild the scene in the latest version. I'll let you know tomorrow.

      • drjleggett 3 years, 5 months ago  | 

        Hi, have you been able to fix it? Thanks!

  • 8BIT_ASSAULT 3 years, 4 months ago  | 

    Hello, hope all are well. My material Autofill does not want to work, any suggestions. Thanks

    • rohandalvi 3 years, 4 months ago  | 

      Mine doesn't seem to work anymore either. But my materials do show up in the USD list. As long as they show up, you can use the assign material to apply them to your geometry.

  • SteveKabuye 3 years, 4 months ago  | 

    Rohan, thanks for this tutorial! Something I have failed to figure out and you did not touch on either, is rendering out object passes for compositing later on. How do you separate and render out separate items from a scene? I have looked at the Geometry Render Settings node and I have failed to make it work. Would appreciate a quick video, thanks!

  • ParamjeetSingh29 3 years, 1 month ago  | 

    Rohan Sir , I can not combine two geometry with merge as layers. They are just combined together.

  • miranbradaric 2 years, 9 months ago  | 

    Hi Rohan, I am wondering why did you use Group Delete and Attribute delete before Flower_OUTs. I understand Normals. I think that might be a reason why I am not getting color at my render.

    • rohandalvi 2 years, 9 months ago  | 

      Don't delete all the groups and attributes. Just the ones you don't need. Usually its a good idea to get rid of extra attributes because they can take up RAM during rendering on very large scene.

      if you want to delete everything and just keep a few the syntax is as follows - * ^stuff_you_want_to_keep

      • miranbradaric 2 years, 9 months ago  | 

        OK, Thank you. Solved the problem with few clicks, render finally shows everything as it should. :D

  • izzy_yangg 2 years, 9 months ago  | 

    Hi Rohan and everyone,

    I'm very new Houdini so apologies in advance if this is a silly question.

    I'm using the Houdini 19 apprentice license and can't seem to see materials in the lopnet perspective viewport. However, when I switch to the Karma Render view, I can then see the materials.

    Following Rohan's tutorial, he seems to be able to view materials straight after assigning without switching views (at about 13:00). Can anyone please help me out - thank you!

    • izzy_yangg 2 years, 9 months ago  | 

      Update: houdini 19 may have cancelled principled shader - I created USD preview surface/Mtrlx standard surface inside the material library node and it all worked fine now!

      • Farlo 2 years, 6 months ago  | 

        I had the same issue. Using the USD Preview Surface solved it for me as well. Thanks Izzy!

  • Krypto88 2 years, 6 months ago  | 

    In Houdini 19.0.622, for "Point attributes to copy" and "principled shader" to work, follow the steps Rohan does and change the following :

    1) Delete the attribute wrangle node in which you have defined "flower" and "leaves" in the geometry SOP
    2)In LOPs, Uncheck the "attributes" option in "import data" section in SOP import node.
    3)In the instancer node(called as intancetopoints node in this tutorial),uncheck " Only copy specified prototype primitives".
    4)Render in Karma.

  • xolobjam 2 years, 5 months ago  | 

    great tutorial so far but questions...why not have like a Discord or Telegram group for Houdini - I am new - maybe there is one...?
    one cannot post images here or code...?

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