RenderMan for Houdini needs to be installed for Solaris to function with RenderMan when using Solaris in Houdini 18.5

New functionality in Houdini Solaris is only available in versions 18.5 and higher when using RenderMan.

RenderMan supports the native USD "Solaris" workflows introduced in Houdini 18.  Solaris offers artists and TDs:

RenderMan provides a USD Hydra Renderer Delegate that allows artists to render interactively directly to the Solaris viewport.  Artists get immediate path-traced visual feedback during scene assembly, adjustments to lighting, materials, and other scene attributes.  The same RenderMan Hydra Renderer Delegate is what also allows the "husk" command-line renderer.

As the SideFX builds on Solaris, RenderMan will continue to provide deep matching integrations to new features and capabilities.

For more information, please consult the other sections of our documentation, as well as from the USD documentation and the Solaris documentation:

Below is a brief demo of rendering with RenderMan within Solaris.