How does Houdini assign materials - Deep Question ?

[CinnamonMetal]

Sorry, this question may be a bit on the vague side. How does Houdini assign materials, is there a sort of hierarchy ?  I know in Maya, there is a hierarchical setup, in other words; the space in which the surface is declared. 

[davpe]

hi,

there is sort of hierarchy in terms of at what level a material is applied: by default, primitive level assignment will override an object level assignment (that can be overriden thou per object)

with style sheets, scene level stylesheet will override object level stylesheets. with stylesheets on objects, bottom ones will override the top ones.

any stylesheet overrides allowed in Mantra ROP will superseed materials assigned otherwise (good for general render pass overrides)

it gets some figuring out to wrap your head around how exactly that works but essentially this is it.

hope that helps. cheers.

[CinnamonMetal]

5 hours ago, davpe said:

hi,

there is sort of hierarchy in terms of at what level a material is applied: by default, primitive level assignment will override an object level assignment (that can be overriden thou per object)

with style sheets, scene level stylesheet will override object level stylesheets. with stylesheets on objects, bottom ones will override the top ones.

Hi @davpe there is no documentation on what you explained ?

I'm not familiar with stylesheets, yet. Primitive Level and Object Level are not seen in the scene view.

[davpe]

there is no topic on material assignment hierarchy in the docs but these information are mentioned there with another relevant topics (like material stylesheets).

btw. what do you mean by "... are not seen in the scene view"?

Edited October 21, 2018 by davpe

[CinnamonMetal]

43 minutes ago, davpe said:

btw. what do you mean by "... are not seen in the scene view"?

You can't see the material  hierarchy as you can sorta within Maya.

[davpe]

well i only have a very basic knowledge of Maya and I don't know how materials are treated there. anyways I dont think you can actually see some kind of material hierarchy in the Houdini viewport since there is no generalized concept of material hierarchies (although different ways of assignment have precedence over the others as I described before). Style sheets provide some sort of hierarchical interface but i don't know how that compares to Maya.

[CinnamonMetal]

I appreciate your input on this question.   I have some experience with Maya, but I asked to understand if I was missing something; it seems stylesheets open the door to another level of shading/materials within Houdini.  

Edited October 21, 2018 by CinnamonMetal
Appreciated was said twice :-)

[davpe]

well material stylesheets is really robust system for texturing scenes containing lots of assets, allowing lots of flexibility. great when you go big, generally said, or if you want to do material magic on packed primitives (without unpacking).

in most normal case scenarios thou, you will do just fine with simple Material SOP and/or object level material assignments. rule there is pretty simple - primitives override objects assignments (unless you choose to force an object level material). so no, I think you're not missing anything, it is just really simple and there is no need to have any kind of hierarchy system (in my opinion).

cheers.