H20.5: Building a Substance like texturing workflow in Copernicus

[@robinlk]

Copernicus is like a gift from above. It's (in the process of) eliminating a workflow step that I could never make friends with - external texturing apps. They might be fast, but a lot of it is 'black box' stuff, where I don't feel like I'm in control. Copernicus might need a few more clicks, but you have a logical workflow and once you have things all set up, it might even be faster (because it's more predictable). I'll be using it - a lot. It would be cool to replace the file textures with parametric ones, more steps but so much control :)

[@chillsoft]

This is my exact situation and I am so happy. I remember doing very complex shaders in RS just because I didn't want to jump out of it, now I can re-use all that shader building knowledge in COPs! :D So awesome!

[@akadolypse]

"I want to scribble like Zomax!". That made my day! Thank you, Christopher, for this amazing tutorial.

[@kwesikwaa]

that hda is so useful i wish it would be made part of the lab tools. thank you guys. now this cops workflow makes a lot of sense. i cannot count the number of times i had several assets made in houdini and felt lazy to ship out to texture and back. in this case all can be done in one place and assets saved along the way to be used as when. a natural way to work

[@CorneliusDammrich]

I see what you did there! 👀

[@Entagma]

I still need to learn a lot about scribbling though... Cheers, Chris 🖌

[@NathanApffel]

+1 for particle paint replication.

[@philippwelsing9108]

Thank you so much. Especially for thr HDA.

[@gt_kenny]

I'm sorry for my french, but, HOLY SHIT you guys are awesome!

[@aivaraslig]

This is amazing. Thank you for your work 🫶

[@Fakepilot]

From an economic, convenience and speed perspective. Houdini users no longer have to use Substance Designer. Take that Adobe! 😀

[@Entagma]

I'd say we're slowly getting there 😁

[@Godkiller08]

I'd say we slowly going to no longer have to use anything from Adobe, which is even better (Substance being one the least annoying of Adobe's products)

[@osefman2763]

The node workflow is great for it's power but the layer workflow (substance painter) is still way faster for that kind of simple work. I want to use houdini for everything but speed is king and i hope that they are going to make quicker to set up (so you don't have to create your own hda to import texture or not having to go back and forth between cops and sops for masks).

[@CarlosDordelly]

Thanks so much! I was missing your Houdini release videos :)

[@somerandomlittlechannel7860]

This is really great

[@FaitelTech]

Thank you for starting the series. I have always been curious about how sophisticated projections such as grid warp and projection from curves work in substance. It would be nice if you could demystify them for me. I like them because I can procedurally add welds, seams, stitches with curves, and panels over curvature surfaces with grid warps.

[@LukeMagdaP]

Love it! Thank you!

[@massimobaita7178]

Thank You very much!

[@JacKsCave]

Awesome!! It would be nice , a paint tool inside cops , maybe a node to isolate geo , or udims . A mask by feature tool to work with uv space ,to avoid de need to store procedural mask in points

[@kimko__]

Just insane.

[@wewantmoreparty]

awesomeness

[@Iqroh]

This is awesome

[@m1kefx231]

Amazing! thank you!

[@fizzypopvfx]

I'd love to see a CGI comp :)

[@carlosrivadulla8903]

Houdini 21 is going to be the definitive Houdini version, one software to rule them all. It's a sad paradox that at the same time, fully textured 3D assets are going to be automated by AI.

[@marko8095]

It would be funny if Sidefx made a ton of Labs nodes that integrate a lot of functionality into one node for COPs, that would completely replace sunstance

[@vincentthomas8492]

As always premium content ... Thanks guys! question... How will you replicate the LAB map baker with hi to low mesh using the new feature ? Substance compute curvature with GPU, too... i was interested to hear your thought about this... Should we build complex shader in compernicus or in Karma matX? And in this case , how to bake a complex karma material? 🤔

[@musashidanmcgrath]

Great job on the PBR layer node. This was badly needed. Another thing that this workflow is crying out for is triplanar. So, there's no way to link the MatX triplanar and PBR builder back into the COPS preview material?

[@MagnusMllerart]

This is great!! I wonder if it's possible to make it work with udims?

[@sovanima]

I am with rtx3060, at turbulent times such as this purchasing next gen gpu ain't good risk. So with that gpu I have VOLCAN viewport does not behave well as it does here in this video... So the workaround is OK I op def all textures to Karma and try work it there, even better to see how textures work directly in the engine. Yes and no due to latency and still not 1:1 native response using Copernicus in Solaris. Least but no last I am not sure what is the UDIM support and what would be the setup for multiple more complex texture sets. Overall great having this new features already in Houdini, a dream idea come true :)

[@teska9998]

love the workflow you showed us, I was wondering if there's a way to integrate Houdini's groom as textures within cops which can then be used as textures for hair cards for video games?

[@philippwelsing9108]

One question: If I don't want to use a SceneImportAll, because I need more than one object, all treated differently - how can I pull the textured hydrant into Solaris? It only seems to come in textured with SceneImportAll.When I reference the COP Net, it's white and no materials. Thanks so much!

[@Bbentley81]

This is indeed amazing. In Substance painter I abuse the planar/wrap projections with the surface tool A LOT. the decal here is painted\baked which is not very art directable down the line. How would one go about implementing these features?

[@nickcentanni1500]

I've been able to create a copnet with six different output maps. I couldn't see the limit you were talking about in the video.

[@philippwelsing9108]

This basically solves the 2 material only limit for material mixing in Karma/Mtlx for most cases. Right? 😍

[@ivanpechalin2603]

great stuff! is there udim support in copernicus?

[@madhur3476]

What about displacement?

[@JacKsCave]

A clone tool could be awesome too

[@bbrother92]

Sorry to ask this - but what point of making material in Houdini - usuallly scenes are rendered in other softwares. Do you guys render in Houdini?

[@jbdh6510]

A lot of big studios are rendering in Houdini. It can handles big scenes. Usually you bring models from eg Maya into Houdini

[@JacKsCave]

With Solaris , houdini it’s the best place to make the lookdev , asset assembly and render . You have free karma or you can choose another render engine like Renderman , arnold , redshift… in solaris with usd

[@bbrother92]

@@JacKsCave I feel that in other software you can just drag n drop assets and compose the scene fastly

[@JacKsCave]

@@bbrother92 in solaris you can do de same if you want. But it’s better create procedural systems to scatter assets or place them not only in manual mode. With rules and systems you can create.

[@bbrother92]

@@JacKsCave thanks

[@paoloricaldone6273]

Hi all, not an expert here: What are the benefits of this workflow in COPs compared to using mtlx directly in karma?

[@Fakepilot]

You don't have this 2D workflow and nodes in Material X. But you can use them with Material X in Karma. 🙂

[@paoloricaldone6273]

@@Fakepilot thank you!

[@Entagma]

More nodes, (somewhat) cleaner workflow and baking the finished textures to images can make your shader a whole lot faster to render. Also playing with new tools is always fun 😇

[@paoloricaldone6273]

@@Entagma All is more clear to me. Thank you!

[@limitlessinmind]

Thid looks extremely painful 😓

[@Persianprograph]

Masking and texture painting should happen inside of COPs rather than SOPs imo

[@philippwelsing9108]

It's way more convenient to mask and texture paint in 3D than it is in 2D. At least to me. You can of course keep the view flag on the Preview Material, make a texture and move it around with a Transform. Works really well, too. Masking... not sure about that in the use cases of the video.

[@BrentonWoods774]

They seriously need to modernize Houdini's UI... Great vid :)

[@GimmeHat]

I don't think so

[@Al1987ac]

In what way?

[@289rk]

houdini is not for the weak , its perfect as it is .

[@parsa475]

I don't see the problem with the current UI. Most of what you need 95% of the time are in the Parameters pane and the buttons around the viewport, neither of which I can think of much better designs for.

[@BrentonWoods774]

@@289rk Nothing is perfect, anything can be improved. If you ask someone who's a UI professional, they will let you know why the current UI needs to change.