dennis.albus Posted May 15, 2015 Share Posted May 15, 2015 This is my Technical Reel with some of the things I've been working on lately - mostly focused on lighting, shading and rendering. Please go to vimeo and watch it in HD as a lot of stuff is really hard or impossible to see in the SD version. Feel free to also check out my other work on my website (95% Houdini / Mantra) www.dennisalbus.com/portfolio The Blog is unfortunately a graveyard right now but I am planning on posting regular updates and information about some of my tools and shaders soon. Cheers, Dennis 8 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
magneto Posted May 16, 2015 Share Posted May 16, 2015 Looks amazing Is it a secret how you blurred procedural noises, etc? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sanostol Posted May 16, 2015 Share Posted May 16, 2015 Great stuff, Dennis! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dennis.albus Posted May 16, 2015 Author Share Posted May 16, 2015 (edited) Looks amazing Is it a secret how you blurred procedural noises, etc? No it is not It is a brute force approach and actually quite simple. I take the shading normal and choose an appropriate distance above the surface as my starting position. Using that and the inverted normal I am sampling towards the surface using a gather loop and interpolating the result. It is important that you export your variable so gather is able to find it. Implementing different blur kernels is trivial when you calculate the distance from the original position to the sampled position. As it is doing the lookup for each image sample you can get away with an astonishingly low number of samples. There are some caveats though: Sharp corners and creases can be a problem when the distance to the surface is too high. You can do an iterative approach and check the result and adjust your sampling settings accordingly. You have to make sure that your cone angle is proportional to the distance to the surface. Otherwise your results vary a lot when changing the distance. The nice thing about this approach is that it works across UV borders as it is sampling in 3D space. Hope this is pointing you in the right direction. I am planning on putting some of my tools on orbolt or on github in the coming weeks (depending on the time I have to spare) Cheers, Dennis Edited May 16, 2015 by dennis.albus 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mestela Posted May 17, 2015 Share Posted May 17, 2015 very cool, very powerful stuff! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sebkaine Posted May 18, 2015 Share Posted May 18, 2015 Great work dennis ! lot of your ideas should be integrated by default in Houdini. As you look to master mantra , what would be your pov about it against competitors like Arnold / RIS ? I ask this because after some extensive test, i really find Mantra the most versatile , and i am trying lo learn it in depth like you do ! Cheers E Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Netvudu Posted May 18, 2015 Share Posted May 18, 2015 Wonderful technical reel. The AOV manager looks like it should be there by default. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dennis.albus Posted May 19, 2015 Author Share Posted May 19, 2015 (edited) Great work dennis ! lot of your ideas should be integrated by default in Houdini. As you look to master mantra , what would be your pov about it against competitors like Arnold / RIS ? I ask this because after some extensive test, i really find Mantra the most versatile , and i am trying lo learn it in depth like you do ! Cheers E Thank you Mantra is a great renderer and it offers an insane amount of flexibility and the integration into Houdini is unmatched. It has been my renderer of choice for almost 7 years now (and trust me 7 years ago mantra was not the same). The reasons for me have always been vex/vops and how it is so easily accessible and customizable. Unlimited free render licenses is also a big plus and is always received very well by the management. That said there are a couple of problems with regards to workflow and speed that need to be sorted out to handle huge production scenes efficiently. It is possible right now, but it is no fun at all. Shader assignment on packed primitives happens as a geometry attribute with is slooooooooooow and memory hungry. This might change once Material Stylesheets are better integrated and replace the current way of assigning materials. Parsing the scene with SOHO to generate an ifd is way too slow. The time it takes to generate an ifd can easily take longer than the rendertime itself. This can be handled by using delayed load alembics and/or mantra archives, but that is not always feasible. Mantra lacks a lot of small convenience features (some of which you saw in my reel). Those should be in mantra by default. Every couple of months I am evaluating other options but up to now there has never been a real reason for me to switch. I am evaluating Arnold right now which is shaping up to be awesomely integrated into Houdini. I just can't let go of vex/vops in exchange to C++ for writing shaders. I am also waiting for Vray for Houdini which could replace Mantra for specific situations where the GI interpolation methods are a real advantage. I just can't see myself switching to it for animations as i am bruteforcing everything for animations anyway. That's it for now. Unfortunately I cannot write down everything as it would be too much and the topics are more suited for a discussion about mantra than for just writing them down. I still hope this helped you a little bit. My advice to you is that you should definitely learn more about mantra. It is a great renderer to LEARN and UNDERSTAND how rendering and shading works which will help you in any renderer. So learning it is definitely not wasted even if you choose to render your projects with something else. Cheers, Dennis Edited May 19, 2015 by dennis.albus 4 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sekow Posted May 19, 2015 Share Posted May 19, 2015 I am working in Mantra for a year now and I have to say that the only flaw is it memory consumption. Saying that coming from Arnold... But then there are those nifty procedurals and delayed load techniques, which just need little setup. The only thing I really miss is a rayswitch method. That was the best tool for optimizing Arnold, so I really hope to get my hands on your shop node strong work dennis, 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dennis.albus Posted May 19, 2015 Author Share Posted May 19, 2015 I am working in Mantra for a year now and I have to say that the only flaw is it memory consumption. Saying that coming from Arnold... But then there are those nifty procedurals and delayed load techniques, which just need little setup. The only thing I really miss is a rayswitch method. That was the best tool for optimizing Arnold, so I really hope to get my hands on your shop node strong work dennis, Check this out http://forums.odforce.net/topic/19041-pbr-rayswitch/?hl=rayswitch It's not the full implementation you can see in my Reel but it explains how to access the raylabels. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sekow Posted May 19, 2015 Share Posted May 19, 2015 thanks for that! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sebkaine Posted May 19, 2015 Share Posted May 19, 2015 Thanks a lot for your detail answer Dennis: - memory consumption - ifd generation - lake of efficient workflow by default Would be your main cons ! the thing is that price / perf ratio + ability to custom mantra like you want without being an engineer is the strongest point of the tool for me. V-ray / Arnold are good alternative but : - arnold is far too expensive for my needs compare to what it offer vs mantra - v-ray has a lot of parameters and is not going into the minimalist direction Maxwell / Arnold follow which is for me the best way to go for an efficient workflow ! i'll stick with Mantra then ... Cheers E E Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
timmwagener Posted June 23, 2015 Share Posted June 23, 2015 (edited) ...... It is a brute force approach and actually quite simple. I take the shading normal and choose an appropriate distance above the surface as my starting position. Using that and the inverted normal I am sampling towards the surface using a gather loop and interpolating the result. It is important that you export your variable so gather is able to find it. Implementing different blur kernels is trivial when you calculate the distance from the original position to the sampled position. As it is doing the lookup for each image sample you can get away with an astonishingly low number of samples. There are some caveats though: Sharp corners and creases can be a problem when the distance to the surface is too high. You can do an iterative approach and check the result and adjust your sampling settings accordingly. You have to make sure that your cone angle is proportional to the distance to the surface. Otherwise your results vary a lot when changing the distance. Hey Dennis, this seems to be quite the same approach that a buddy once used to build a Curvature Shader like this with the Vray SDK. Instead of interpolating the sample values shot from the inverted normal, he would average the distance of the vectors until a point was hit, compare them to the distance of the point used to shot from and then just map them to a color. This results in a "bendiness" pixel value and also indicates if the bending is forward or backward. This might be useful as an alternative dirt map approach, especially to mask worn edges or scratches on metal. If Houdini doesnt have something like this already, it seems like you are already half the way there! Great work! Edited June 23, 2015 by timmwagener Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SSFX Posted July 17, 2015 Share Posted July 17, 2015 (edited) So where is that "generator rendering engine"? I can only find the vm_generatorshader deep down soho param files, but no sign of the render engine itself. Can you give me a hint? Great reel btw! Thanks Edited July 17, 2015 by SSFX 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dennis.albus Posted July 20, 2015 Author Share Posted July 20, 2015 So where is that "generator rendering engine"? I can only find the vm_generatorshader deep down soho param files, but no sign of the render engine itself. Can you give me a hint? Great reel btw! Thanks Hey, I know I promised a video on vimeo and I am still planning to do it. However I've been super busy the last couple of weeks due to a new job. I will try to get a short video on how to set it up and how you can use it as soon as possible. Cheers, Dennis Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SSFX Posted July 20, 2015 Share Posted July 20, 2015 No worries, take your time I'm just really curious about the feature and how you figured it out!? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hamp Posted July 30, 2015 Share Posted July 30, 2015 The Blog is unfortunately a graveyard right now but I am planning on posting regular updates and information about some of my tools and shaders soon. Cheers, Dennis Eagerly awaiting some blog posts, your techniques are awesome! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jordibares Posted August 10, 2015 Share Posted August 10, 2015 Inspiring, very interesting Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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