kunz Live 2022.09.02

Live 2022.09.02

From kunz

Shading techniques for Solaris, USD and MaterialX

2022 08 23 Karma USD Mtlx.gif

Scene File

Download the Houdini file: 2022_08_23_materialx_USD_008.hiplc

Summary

Building a shader from scratch in Solaris with MaterialX. The color values are retrieved from the geometry "Cd" attribute and the displacement pattern is generated using MaterialX math nodes to remap the surface position to a waffle grid-like bumpy pattern.

Below is the MaterialX shading network.

Screenshot at 2022-09-09 13-00-32.png


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


During the live stream, I didn't connect the height to normal node properly which was causing the shading artifacts. To fix this, you can add a normal map node in between the shader connection like so.

Screenshot at 2022-09-09 14-39-32.png

Links

You can read more about using MaterialX in Karma and Solaris here.

The MtlX Standard Surface node is based off of the Autodesk Standard Surface

For more details, see the MaterialX specification on the nodes, functionality and capabilities.

Additional Images

2022 09 02 karma particle basics 018.jpeg

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2022 09 02 karma particle basics 016.jpeg