Rendering layers - reflection

[Lukich]

Hi. I was wondering if there's a way to isolate and render only the reflections separately from everything else to keep them as a separate layer? Thanks!

[SpencerL]

i havent tested it, but wouldnt it be just turing the diffuse, ambiet, spec, etc on your shader to black and just keeping your reflections?

[rdg]

i havent tested it, but wouldnt it be just turing the diffuse, ambiet, spec, etc on your shader to black and just keeping your reflections?

if the shader supports it you can specify output planes in the renderROP.

This renders reflections and other usefull stuff into channels (pic, openxr) or as seperate files.

It's called Extra Image Planes in the properties tab of the output module.

Cheers,

Georg

[Lukich]

How can I find out whether the shader supports it or not? Also, when I create my new shader, how would I make it support the aforementioned process? By exporting certain parameters? I did a very basic test of creating two objects with different shaders (default houdini ones), and one of those shaders was "Reflective Material" from the material palette. In the extra image planes the choices i got were: color, opacity, alpha, position, position-s and normal. Would i choose color as a vex variable and specify a reflection under channel name?

[Lukich]

Spencer, your approach worked just fine. Thanks!

[symek]

How can I find out whether the shader supports it or not? Also, when I create my new shader, how would I make it support the aforementioned process? By exporting certain parameters? I did a very basic test of creating two objects with different shaders (default houdini ones), and one of those shaders was "Reflective Material" from the material palette. In the extra image planes the choices i got were: color, opacity, alpha, position, position-s and normal. Would i choose color as a vex variable and specify a reflection under channel name?

Simply check shaders from Houdini's own gallery, most of them are build in a way allowing export deepraster. The only thing to watch out is to make sure variables names (on ROP deepraster) are the same as defined in shader (+ types are correct: float, vector etc). Those predefined in drop-down menu are just examples, You can export any variable from shaders that was checked as "Export" in VOPs (or exists in VEX code properly declared with "export" statement).

cheers,

sy.

Edited April 24, 2008 by SYmek