Volume rendering workflow for PRMan

[lukeiamyourfather]

What is the de facto way to render volumes from Houdini in PRMan? Or is there one? For example if I want to render a volume in Mantra I'd save out the volume (simulation or clouds, whatever) as a BGEO and use a delayed load procedural geometry shader and a volume shader like the pyro shader or billowy smoke shader. What would be the equivalent workflow for PRMan? What process do I need to take in order to read the volume back in on the PRMan side? Thanks!

[brianburke]

What is the de facto way to render volumes from Houdini in PRMan? Or is there one? For example if I want to render a volume in Mantra I'd save out the volume (simulation or clouds, whatever) as a BGEO and use a delayed load procedural geometry shader and a volume shader like the pyro shader or billowy smoke shader. What would be the equivalent workflow for PRMan? What process do I need to take in order to read the volume back in on the PRMan side? Thanks!

houdini ships with a utility called 'hbrickmap' and a rop called "Brick Map Generator". You can feed the brick map generator your volume files and it will write out these as brickmaps. as of prman 15 brickmaps are a first class volume primitive that can be rendered as microvoxels in a similar way to how mantra renders volumes. check out the "volume rendering" chapter of the prman 15 docs. there are some simple shaders to get you started.

good luck