(Resolved) [HOU-3305] Transfer materials from Maya to Houdini

[mr_poddar]

Hi, I was trying to transfer materials from Maya scene to Houdini using vrscene. I was able to unpack vrscene in Houdini and get the shading network but the only thing not transferring is the displacement network. In Maya, I tried both, applying the displacementShader in the ShadingGroup and the v-ray displacement node on the geo itself, still only the displacement shader in missing when unpacking in Houdini. Whereas Displacement works I don't unpack and render directly from the vrscene. Is this a limitation? Any workarounds? My main goal is to transfer the shading network between DCCs.

Thanks

[bdancer]

> Is this a limitation?

Yes.

> Any workarounds?

Currently no.
Since in V-Ray plugin terms displacement is geometry (not material) it's a bit tricky to import it.

> My main goal is to transfer the shading network between DCCs.

Hope USD will help here at some point.

[mr_poddar]

Thank you for the clarification!

I did try a partial workaround for the displacement shading network. I just plugged the displacementShader node with all it's upstream math node network to an arbitrary empty attribute (ex- Bump Strength) in the Material, so that it doesn't get skipped when exporting. This way, when unpacking the vrscene in Houdini, I get the entire network and I just have to unplug it from the proxy attribute and plug to a new displacement node there. Only issue I faced in this was, I had used input3D-plusMinusAverage nodes to in my maya node network, which were skipping any upstream nodes. So I replaced those with floatMath nodes which worked perfectly.

[bdancer]

I guess node is not implemented for the plugin type "input3D-plusMinusAverage" is converted into. I could add it if needed if you could send me a .vrscene file.

[mr_poddar]

Hi, so the Maya node is "plusMinusAverage" which Houdini converts to a "V-Ray TexAColorOp" node. The Houdini node only has two input options (Color A & B), whereas The Maya node has Input 3D option with 3 inputs. I've attached a screengrab of the Maya node. I'll send a vrscene once I'm back at my system.

[bdancer]

>The Houdini node only has two input options (Color A & B), whereas The Maya node has Input 3D option with 3 inputs.

That's just the way Maya draws inputs, and Houdini node has 5 inputs... It'll be much appreciated if you could just send me the vrscene file.

[mr_poddar]

Hi, I've attached the vrscene with the material network which has the mentioned nodes. Please let me know if you need anything.

Thank You

[Gosho.Genchev]

Hey, mr_poddar ,

I've logged a request in our tracker for adding the plugins needed to properly import the material network.

I'll keep you posted.

Best regards!

[mr_poddar]

Thanks a lot!! Gosho.Genchev