Live 2022.08.23

Shading techniques for Solaris, USD and MaterialX

Scene File

Get the Houdini scene here: data_disk_sim_007.hiplc

Summary

Simple setup where a particle simulation is driven by pyro velocity field. The geometry in the particle simulation is continuously resampled using a sop solver to maintain evenly spaced line segments and prevent some spiking artifacts.

I use some simple VEX code to only allow velocities in the vel field in areas above a certain threshold. This helps keep some parts of the line structure rigid and intact while other areas above the threshold are free to move.

v@vel *= length(@vel)>.005;

After the simulation, the curves get their normal by sampling the velocity field from the pyro sim. This gives you a consistent (non-flickering) orientation of the curves when you render them.

Video On Demand

• 00:00 Solaris LOP Stage introduction
• 02:50 LOP node concepts
• 09:10 Making a MaterialX shader
• 14:30 Using geometry attributes in MaterialX
• 15:30 Using other geometry properties to generate patterns
• 24:10 Enabling ACES through the SideFX Labs menu
• 34:40 Modeling a blobby shape
• 45:10 Adjusting lights and materials for the blobby shape
• 1:00:00 Looking at the structure of USD files
• 1:03:00 Adding studio backdrop geometry
• 1:16:00 Adjusting camera composition and render settings

Additional Scene Files

data_disk_sim_001.hiplc

data_disk_sim_002.hiplc

data_disk_sim_003.hiplc

Additional Images