[novoice] rendering layers + common shaders in Mantra

[catchyid]

Hi,

I have Maya background in rendering. When it comes to Houdini:

1-I see many shaders available (e.g Mantra, principled ,...), usually there will be "old/legacy" shaders and new modern ones, so which shaders are the most recent and used in Houdini? 

2-I know I can render diffuse, shadows, ao layers in Mantra, but can I easily render parts, i.e. set of objects, e.g. background objects and then foreground objects?

I know these questions are primitive, will check the documentation tomorrow, but hope someone can give me some pointers to start with

Thanks,

[davpe]

Hi,

1) most recent shaders are Surface Model Shader (Mantra's native) and Principled Shader (implementation of Disney shader). 

2) If you want a pass with one set of objects and then separate pass with another set of objects, you simply create two Mantra ROPs with these sets defined in Objects tab (you can use Bundles to easily refer to many objects).

I have no Maya background so hopefully this make sense.

[catchyid]

Thanks David, this is helpful  I just checked the documentation and there are tons of things to read ...

[davpe]

yeah, docs are pretty good. other up to date and in-depth resources on shaders in Houdini are quite sparse though.