thrasherstudios77 Posted March 16, 2003 Share Posted March 16, 2003 Ah the perfect marriage, GI and Houdini Thanks side fx for bringing GI into Mantra, means us students can reap the benefits now. I was wondering if now that Mantra has GI can we start using HDR probes as environment maps for our scenes. If so how would one go about setting up a HDRI rendering in Houdini? Also, and this is probably reaching a bit, but is there someone out there that has had alot of experience with GI and HDRI in Houdini (Renderman or Mental Ray) that could explain how to get good results out of the new Mantra GI renderer, maybe provide a HIP file. I have tried Mental Ray's plugin-in for Maya and HDRI in Maya and have gotten some pretty decent results, hopeing I can do the same in Houdini How does Mantra GI compare to Mental Ray or Renderman for Houdini? Thanx in advance Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
michael Posted March 16, 2003 Share Posted March 16, 2003 in the "What's new" section of the Houdini 6 docs it's says: "RADIANCE high dynamic range (HDR) file format support. [no alpha]" and "isixpack (Reflection Map Generator) can use light probe images (http://www.debevec.org/Probes/)" so that is a Yes for your first question...as for how to use/set it up...I don't know ....Robert Magee made mention over at the Side effects forum of specific tutorial material etc that would be coming soon ... "The goal is to teach the concepts and workflows in smaller chunks instead of creating longer tutorials that force you to step away from your work. The idea is that if you decide to use a concept such as global illumination in your work then we will have a lesson devoted to that one topic that you can then apply to your work without breaking off into tutorial land." so this at least implies that there will be a GI tutorial of some kind...add to this the fact that is a new feature I would expect to see something sooner rather than later.... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wolfwood Posted March 16, 2003 Share Posted March 16, 2003 Anyone do any simple Photon Map tests yet? I've done a few and have had mixed results. Do Photon shaders take into account point color attributes? I've tried but I haven't gotten it to take yet. Which is probably due to my fumbling. There are some really useful features that have but subtly been introduced. Like the "Contributing Lights" mask in ROPs. Nice and easy for doing lighting layers. So many UI enhancements. I love it. jim. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wolfwood Posted March 16, 2003 Share Posted March 16, 2003 Simply for the sake of doing it I did a ghetto Cornell Box. I'll include the scene in the following post. Here are some things I noticed. -Every now and then when I generate a photon map (Global, 500k) I see the photon map file size grow to a reasonable size, but as soon as it finishes rendering the file size drops back to 10 bytes. On a side note. I don't understand the "Direct Photon Map". It says the global contains everything, including the caustic. So I assume that means I'm suppose to create a direct and a caustic photon map. However I don't see a Direct Photon Map entry in the Mantra ROP. But there is a parameter for it in the Global Illum. Light. I need more documentation. PHEAR the extremely overbright caustic [Edit] Ack....Phear the horrible jpg compression which undid my 1,000,000 Count photon map. jim. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wolfwood Posted March 16, 2003 Share Posted March 16, 2003 ... and the here is the ghetto Cornell box. Oh....If you want to see the contributions to from the two different Photon Maps, you can just render out the specific light you want using Contributing Lights. So if you just want to see the Global Map's influence type "/obj/Indirect" in the fast_mantra's Contributing Lights parameter. jim. cornell.zip Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wolfwood Posted March 16, 2003 Share Posted March 16, 2003 The OTLs rock. =) I want to see how the Vex GI Light works. Hmmmm where is it at? Lets go to the Operator Type Manager. Find the gilight. Then do "edit contents". Sweet, the Dialog script, Help, VexCode and VflCode. All neatly packed in there. I love it. jim. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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