Is it possible to export Houdini's data to other renderers with C+

[yaoyansi]

Hi all,

I'm new to HDK, and I'm going to intergate a renderer into Houdini. But I still want to do some adventures, so need you help.

I guess I need to access the scene data, e.g. the geometry data, camera data, light data, shader data, material data, and send the data to that renderer.

I read this page SOHO: Scripted Output of Houdini Objects in http://www.sidefx.com/docs/hdk12.0/, and $HFS/houdini/help/hom/_index.html. I guess that Houdini prefers python to C++ to access scene data.

But, the renderer is written with C and C++, and the python API of that renderer is not provieded yet.

My question is, is it possible to use the C++ API instead of Python API(SOHO?HOM?) in HDK to access the scene data?

If the answer is yes, how to do it? Is there any open source project or example which demostrates that how to use C++ API to access Houdini scene data?

In contrast with python API(SOHO? HOM?), what's the advantage and disadvantage of using C++ API in HDK to access scene data?

Thank you.

yaoyansi

Edited December 27, 2012 by yaoyansi

[anim]

I quess SOHO is the way to go

it doesn't require your renderer to have Python API

if I understand it properly, SOHO will just parse houdini scene and output scene description file for your renderer, so if you know the structure of such file it should be pretty straightforward

there is a SOHO example on sidefx webpage

http://www.sidefx.com/masterclasses/2007/soho-example.tgz