Trying to work within houdini and send all usd scene to composer/Isaac Sim. but i found there is no MDL material nodes in Houdini connector anymore? according to this SideFX Houdini Connector MDL Workflow Tutorial | Omniverse 2020 | NVIDIA On-Demand there should be built-in Omni material node available in the vex builder. but seems houdini did some change to this panel??
also, before trying to work with MDL material. i was looking forward to use MaterialX accorss houdini and Omniverse platform(composer / isaac Sim). but after did some research online, it seems houdini has well support on MaterialX but Omniverse didnāt. and there ināt too much info on future support which is a pity. however i do saw some people work with materialX successfully but i cannot get in touch with themā¦
So, what is the best practice right now for materials to work with Houdini and Omniverse(composer/isaac sim). any help would be really appreciate. thanks!
Actually USD Composer fully supports Material X. Are you using the latest version of Composer 107? Donāt use anything on Launcher itās too old and legacy.
However I would offer you the same advice I give everyone on materials. Omniverse has an amazing material library and really advanced material workflow. You are better off not doing your material workflow in Houdini and just export the geometry as usd and get that into Composer. Then do all your lighting, materials, camera and animation workflow directly in Composer.
As a good rule, always do as much as you can in the āfinalā application. If you intend to use Composer, try to do everything but the modeling in Composer.
Actually i have to complain a bit about the Launcher and all the scattered download link. itās really confusing. i cannot find a valid download link searching with googleā¦
yes, i am currently using composer download from Launcher released in 2023.2.4, since from the documentation here USD Composer 2023.2.5 ā Omniverse USD Composer, the latest relase is 2023_2_5ā¦ Iāll try use the new version instead, do you mind paste the download link here? i just cannot get a valid link other than from Omniverse Launcher.
As for materialXās support, does isaac sim has same level of support for it? Our āfinalā application is actually Isaac Sim, but our current workflow of making assets were from 3ds max and Houdini. the only thing that bugs me is the material system does not work. i was trying to work with MDL through Omniverse Connector, but like i mentioned above, the mdl nodes seems disappeared. did you have any ideas or could you help asking anyone working on this?
like you said we should try do everything in Composer. but in our pipeline, we have to involve houdini to process some data. as for 3ds max were usd for modeling and UV-unwarping and texturing. no sure if composer are good for these work.
Lastly, in case we still need to work with 3ds and houdini, whatās the best material workflow for now? is usdpreview surface material a solution or is MtlX already works fine.
Material workflow is very difficult right now. You can either use our Omniverse connectors, which converts most things into a USD format we can read. Or you can use the native Autodesk, 3DS Max, or Maya exporters, but you have to keep material workflow very very basic and old-school. For example, using the old āstandardā materials works the best.
I would try to do as little material workflow as possible outside of Isaac Sim. And if you do make the materials incredibly simple, so they can be converted well. You will just have to experiment with whatever software youāre exporting from. You can try MaterialX in the latest version of Isaac Sim and Composer, but you may have to turn on special extensions to read them.
Overall what is your project and what are you trying to achieve? Some kind of robot, some kind of digital twin?
yes, we are doing some digital twin and some simulation in Isaac Sim.
i was trying to do some assets processing in Houdini. do you have any idea or can you help ask people working on the MDL nodes in houdini why they are missing in Houdini 20.5? Thanks for replying
