Day 06

Back to playing with the shader I was working on, looked at how some other users build their shaders. I learnt how to include an opacity parameter into mine, it was much simpler than expected.

Create "Parameter VOP" > feed it into "Output" Of input.

Initially thought it was too good to be true as the Shade View did not update the transparent result, rendering frame shows it works.





Test rendering of FLIP fluids with the fluidShader_v003 and Mantra Surface.

Forum:

Came across a real nice .pdf document on Shading & Rendering in Houdini over at odforce.

http://forums.odforce.net/index.php?/topic/12365-shading-documentation/

There were information on different rendering algorithms and what individual parameter in Mantra Surface Shader do.

The part that I really find useful would be this.



Understanding what you need

Well it is often best to think of what you are shading for, since as of h11 all the different shading networks have been combined into one working environment.

1. Are you creating a displacement, surface, light, shadow, or fog shader?
2. If you are doing a surface shader are you using PBR or non-PBR settings?
3. Are you working with a normal hard surface object, hair, volumetrics, points clouds, i3d, etc.
4. What type of components do you want in this object diffuse, reflections, sub-surface, alpha.
5. What type of shading over area system do you plan on using such as UVs, Ptex, Point clouds, attributes from sops.

After asking yourself a bunch of these question you should create a list of the components you want and from here you can begin to select nodes that you can use.