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Ubershaders are bad for you, mmkay?


eetu

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People everywhere warn against ubershaders, but I felt I needed to make that mistake personally. :)

http://undo.fi/houdini/uber/

This is a work in progress, consider it "public beta" at this point. Comments/bugs very welcome.

Rationale: Much of the work I do is very fast-paced, sometimes just a couple of hours from start to delivery.

The stock materials are nice but not always flexible enough, and wiring up new ones from scratch is often

too time-consuming. Hence this try at a generic-use material that could be used for the majority of surfaces

needed (but of course not all).

This is my first take on an ubershader, I knew from the onset that I will redo it a couple of times. Having now

done it once I have a much better idea on how to make it more modular, and what kind of modules it perhaps

should consist of. Maybe I should've waited until v2 before posting this, but it might be some time before I have

the time again, plus it's good to get other opinions - and maybe this can be of use to someone already.

Pros:

- ramp usage, mostly copied from lightwave gradients

- grit, accessibility shading

- exported buffers listed in gui

- beginnings of modularity/abstraction (procedurals defined independently and then referenced into by different

surface attributes)

Cons:

- I've grown a bit dissatisfied with the overall structure of the shader, both ui and inside

- not nearly enough modularity/abstraction

- the reflection/refraction setup is perhaps a bit clumsy

- Sometimes mantra crashes when doing glass and rendering with many threads, i still haven't found the cause

eetu.

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As a "pre-beta" tester of this shader I must say it has really made shading and rendering in Houdini more manageable and approacable. Being used to mia_material and modo, this is a welcome addition to my toolset. Thank you for your hard work, eetu!

Good times ;)

- O.

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  • 5 months later...
People everywhere warn against ubershaders, but I felt I needed to make that mistake personally. :)

I am totally in favor of ube shaders, and I think is one of he think I really miss in Houdini, really good production proven ubershaders.

I have done some of them in gthe past and they are really useful, and if you copy concepts from LW or mia_material this is great cos they really make shading a more simpler task.

I will try to find some time to est your shader.

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  • 4 weeks later...

great job, eetu, on both the shader and the shading. would you mind sharing the scene? maybe the search for a standard houdini shading ball would come to an end and we could start posting shader (tests) in a standardized way.

cheers,

Abdelkareem

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  • 1 month later...

hey, this is awesome! i'm having an error though... i'm probably not doing something right. but if i just open the scene file. and render one of the mantra nodes. i get the bunny's as either black or white mattes. and a list of errors:

i tried to figure out what was wrong with the errors it was throwing, but it all looked fine to me. it was saying something about bad parameter references

i attached a pic of warnings

it looks GREAT though! can't wait to figure out what i'm missing here!

Jonathan

***UPDATE***

so I noticed the renderer was set for mantra 9.5 by default. so i tried mantra 10 but it still gave the errors. so then i thought maybe it's because i'm using 10 and so i tried opening it in 9.5 and it worked. any thoughts on this?

thanks

badpar.tiff

Edited by itriix
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  • 1 month later...
hey, this is awesome! i'm having an error though... i'm probably not doing something right. but if i just open the scene file. and render one of the mantra nodes. i get the bunny's as either black or white mattes. and a list of errors:

i tried to figure out what was wrong with the errors it was throwing, but it all looked fine to me. it was saying something about bad parameter references

i attached a pic of warnings

it looks GREAT though! can't wait to figure out what i'm missing here!

Jonathan

***UPDATE***

so I noticed the renderer was set for mantra 9.5 by default. so i tried mantra 10 but it still gave the errors. so then i thought maybe it's because i'm using 10 and so i tried opening it in 9.5 and it worked. any thoughts on this?

thanks

I got same results.. i think its a problem with houdini 10 not mantra

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I got same results.. i think its a problem with houdini 10 not mantra

The surface color vop was changed a few months back. This allows for more flexibility in the material. I had mailed a fixed version to eetu, but I'm guessing he hasn't had a chance to update the version he offers on his site yet.

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  • 2 weeks later...

AMAZINGAMAZINGAMAZINGAMAZINGAMAZINGAMAZINGAMAZINGAMAZINGAMAZINGAMAZINGAMAZINGAMAZINGAMAZINGAMAZINGAMAZINGAMAZINGAMAZINGAMAZINGAMAZINGAMAZINGAMAZINGAMAZINGAMAZINGAMAZINGAMAZINGAMAZINGAMAZINGAMAZINGAMAZINGAMAZINGAMAZINGAMAZINGAMAZING

I LOVE YOU^^

I WILL VOTE THAT ETU BECOMSE A GOOD JOB at SIDEFX and i will vote for an integration of that material Network inside the next Houdini release.

For my Point of View its the first time that someone build up a complete shader network with all you need. Even Sidefx dont build those network...i dont understand it. I think Sidefx dosent reallized, that this integration ist fundamental to get a larger Community, because to build good materials is a key element of every 3d application so I hope sidefx will understand the importants of that.

VERY thanks to ETuu...

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Hi,

I tried the v.65 and I am still gettting a solid white render and an error saying cannot find a signiture with the correct arguments and return type for the "set" arguments. Also errors about export values. I am on 10.0.249.5

Just wondering if anyone else is experiencing the same issues?

thanks!

david

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