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For more details on authoring materials in USD with LOPs, such as adding material references and variants, see LOPS tutorial 1. We will outline basic material workflow with RenderMan materials.

Create Material

Materials are created within the Material Library LOP.

Houdini 24 > Creating a Material in Solaris > rfh_solaris_materiallibrary.PNG

Dive inside and create your material network.

Houdini 24 > Creating a Material in Solaris > rfh_solaris_vexbuilder.PNG

Go back up to the Material Library parameters and auto-fill materials. See the note below.

Houdini 24 > Creating a Material in Solaris > rfh_solaris_autofillmaterial.PNG

Assign Material

Fill in the Primitives and Material Path parameters on the Assign Material LOP for each material assignment. You can either type the paths or drag and drop from the Scene Graph Tree. Here we are assigning the material we created above to a sphere.

Houdini 24 > Creating a Material in Solaris > rfh_solaris_assignmaterial.PNG

Multi-Renderer Workflow

Solaris supports multi-render materials. To create, wire the different renderers' material networks to a collect node. The correct network is selected when a hydra render is started.

PxrMaterialBuilder is not yet supported in Solaris, which is the default RfH workflow you see elsewhere. To package a RenderMan material network, create a subnetwork VOP.

Houdini 24 > Creating a Material in Solaris > rfh_solaris_multirender.PNG

The Subnetwork VOP contains a subinput and a suboutput. Wire bxdf and displacement connections to the suboutput. These outputs should then be connected to the material library's collect node. The subinput VOP can be used for indirect inputs from the material library network.

Houdini 24 > Creating a Material in Solaris > rfh_solaris_subnet.PNG