Live 2022.08.23

Shading techniques for Solaris, USD and MaterialX

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.

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.

Links

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