ejr32123

this doesn't directly answer your question, but karma can do this. When using karma/solaris it saves the snap shot to disk and you can see it again when re-opening houdini. A lot of good features are being added but you have to use solaris to use them.

Not sure how to do it in mantra, but in redshift I can make a material that receives GI and shadows (and I can also disable one or both of those if I want), but not normal lighting. That way my texture matches the scene but can also pick up shadows in case a shadow is cast over it. If you can't do that in mantra it would be possible to render the geometry top faces again but with a shadow catcher material, then in compositing you comp the shadow back on the top faces as you said.

Are you using a separate material for the inner faces? That might help. I think you just don't want lighting on the top faces where your texure is being projected. The rest of the geometry needs lighting otherwise it looks flat. You just don't want lighting on the top faces so that it matches the footage. The fracture node outputs inner faces groups to help with that.

would be nice to see a more streamlined way of controlling random time offsets with point attributes. point attributes don't really work with timeshift unless in a for loop, but it doesn't work very efficiently and is really slow. CGwiki has a page about time offsets in for loops. Of course chops works, but point attribute + timeshift seems like it could be way easier.

Yea, that works for me. I wanted to see if I could boost it with a volume light. I should have clarified that.

edit: I think it just not compatible.

this isn't an answer to your question, but why not use sparse pyro?

Hello, Is it possible to have emission from pyro (fire, etc) illuminate the scene in karma? It doesn't seem that volume light works in karma. Thanks

I was told on sidefx.com forums the play bar cannot be changed in size

been using houdini for years and I never tried to do this until now. how do I make the play bar area taller/resize it? Can't really find a way to do it. thanks : )

that is what I wound up doing. I stupidly put a rs multiply node, then it came out gray. After a few mins I realized it needed a rs multiply vector, lol. I forgot sometimes rs nodes split things like that up.

update: someone pointed out to me that you can just multiply your albedo by the occlusion. You could do that either in the material or in photo shop/after effects layer the occlusion pass on top and set it to multiply. Then it looks correct.

well, I actually found the answer to my question by editing the material in mixer. I think the problem is quixel materials are meant for games, so they include a "occlusion" texture. If I disable it, it looks like my render. Of course there is no way to plug in a occlusion texture into a rs material or principled shader. So what exactly am I supposed to do to get this looking good in houdini?

hello. I recently started using more of quixel's megascan library with redshift in houdini. Most of the 3d assets render fine, but I seem to have the most trouble with getting textures to look decent, especially grass. I can get dirt looking good, but it seems like I have to constantly change settings like displacement amount depending on the shot angle/lighting. I swear it seems impossible that the render they show was actually made from the same textures. Look at their render of the grass, then look at mine. It's like their are gaps of shapeless color between patches of grass. It looks nothing like the fully dense grass render they have. I tried using both mantra and redshift, nothing comes close to making the grass look anything like the render they have. It just looks flat with gaps between patches of grass. any tips?

Hopefully other people don't know this so I am not the only dumb person here, lol. I just found out if you use UPPERCASE letters in your node name, it shows first in the choose operator dialogue. That is why SESI scene files always have the term "OUT" in caps. Anyway, that's it from me. Good luck...