Karma XPU: A Houdini 20 Preview | Brian Sharpe | SIGGRAPH HIVE 2023

Learn about the latest improvements to Karma XPU - SideFX's USD-based GPU/CPU renderer. New capabilities include subsurface scattering, demand-loaded sparse textures, nested dielectrics, uniform volumes, and more. Gain insights on Houdini's USD-based Solaris framework and how Karma XPU integrates with it. Uncover the technical details of how the SideFX team leveraged NVIDIA technology to power the industry's newest USD renderer.
00:00 Presentation
01:08 OpenUSD and Solaris
02:00 MaterialX
02:40 An Intro to Karma
03:15 Karma XPU
04:03 Benefits of XPU
06:15 New XPU features
11:36 Karma XPU architecture, Déjà vu
11:52 Subsurface Scattering
12:47 Uniform Volumes
13:44 Cylinder Lights
14:26 Light Clipping
15:41 NVIDIA tech
17:05 Q&A
Brian Sharpe is a Senior Rendering Developer at SideFX where he is the primary developer of Karma XPU, SideFX's new hybrid GPU/CPU renderer. Before joining SideFX, he worked at Weta Digital where he was the engineering lead on Weta’s proprietary physically-based GPU renderer, Gazebo. Brian has over 20 years of experience in the computer graphics industry and has also previously worked for Sony Interactive Entertainment, Sidhe, and Pandromeda.

[@audiodrocher]

Houdini is a beautiful piece of software engineering, thanks SideFX 😊

[@litalienvisual]

So happy to see Dispersion finally coming to Karma!! Can't wait for Houdini 20 to come out

[@reaktorleak89]

One more year and I’ll feel comfortable moving my team over to XPU. It’s catching up really fast to renderers, like the one we pay for annually on the farm.

[@pragmaticvfx]

Karma has come a long way since the initial release! Thanks SESI!

[@AlanAlan-pmz]

Karma xpu is incredibly fast. Even though it's not production ready I'm already using it in my work. I'm so exciting for Houdini 20!!!!!

[@karlisstigis]

Can't wait to check out the XPU!

[@laoyinglaoyingkk]

Looking forward to seeing more new features in Houdini 20

[@ahahlex]

Using already karma xpu on a daily basis and I prefer to deal with limitation than using third party render engine, so happy to see light linker and AOVs are coming in h20 !

[@MDA_01]

Some nice features coming our way...

[@HiredGunGames]

Houdini s my first choice for professional software because of how in depth it is. I can make my own tools very easy to complete my work

[@akueaduayi2138]

Excellent!

[@Tritoon710]

The problem is sometimes when u use a feature is not supported on XPU you don’t get a warning tells you this settings is supported only on CPU.. This is so confusing.

[@OnePatrix]

Learned Blender, Now Im Learning Houdini (From April?) And I love both , Maybe I'll not understand everything for now, but I'll keep going :D

[@KarelChytilArt]

IES great feature for me :) sure fur... and everything... love Houdini

[@kwesikwaa9204]

h20 sneak peak is all we need

[@ahahlex]

"Later this year"... but how much later ? 😭

[@kwesikwaa9204]

@@ahahlex this is the longest wait

[@dalelinney8437]

@@ahahlexI'm happy with this year

[@paolorava7912]

Looking goood ❤

[@CGFUN829]

when ?

[@YunchuFX]

Will the H20 finish the physical caustics of the karma xpu?

[@sanescobar7489]

How about use of AI for light sampling and other raytrace stuff? like it is done in oter GPU only renderer.

[@animhaxx]

Finally!Finally

[@Square-zero-one]

Was that Eric Smith making a question at 21:40 ? I think I heard you buddy!

[@DanteMetaphor]

Damn, andjust after I extended my redshift license. well guess its my last perpetual extension anyways since they are forcing everyone to subscriptions. Guess its time to move my pipeline to karma since i dont see any reason to pay an extra subscription for RS when the development has slowed down to a crawl.

[@khomatech6428]

screw Maxon.

[@mnomadvfx]

If you already like Redshift then it's not such a bad thing to keep to it for now. GPU renderers often miss features in the CPU renderer for some tme after release anyway going by Arnold as an example.

[@SLPCaires]

great stuff, but can you render a bumpmap on xpu yet?

[@ahahlex]

yes you can, "usduvtexture" > "mtlxnormalmap" > "mtlxstandard_surface"

[@szymonsniegocki528]

Could someone elaborate on, what was question with rendering geo on render time about, specifically? kzbin.info/www/bejne/r4qUnmuEmtesl6s . For example teselation, and hairs generation, does work no xpu, so what geometry he meant?

[@user-pv4ze2gu1b]

First comment. Bring it on. Houdini 20

[@Rated111E]

Where’s the best spot to learn Houdini?? If I wanted a career in it.

[@JWPanimation]

I would suggest learning on your own utilizing both paid tutorials and free ones.

[@mnomadvfx]

On the internet probably. Going to university is a great experience, but for the cost you are much better off doing it yourself and developing a portfolio in the process as university courses take no pains to get you to develop a starter portfolio that will get you that first job. Worse still, many universities won't even tell you that you absolutely need a portfolio to get a job in the industry.

[@haifucui134]

Somebody tell me is it Production Ready？

[@mnomadvfx]

If they literally just released it my assumption would be no. At the very least I would wait until v20.5 - perhaps even v21 for that. At the very least it will be missing features present in the CPU only version of Karma.

[@lucapupulin6990]

does Karma XPU support NVLink?

[@lastone032085]

No.

[@pshethia01]

Artificial intelligence

[@mnomadvfx]

Is a cancer on graphics work. It's fine if you want the computers version of a hallucination in your images, but if you want pixel accuracy then AI/ML is not such a great idea to pursue.

[@morgonaut]

sad there will be for long time no Apple Silicon GPU support. With the unified memory that would be dealbreaker :(

[@morgonaut]

@@somewhatnewtoyou don't be jealous :)

[@vladyslavlavrenov9167]

@@morgonaut Cringe, nobody is jealous of Apple users

[@santiagorinaldi1712]

99.99% of people who use houdini professional dont use APPLE....

[@morgonaut]

​@@santiagorinaldi1712 "99.99% of people who use houdini professional dont use APPLE...." - that shoud be valid impressive argument? 95% of people use Windows and we all know how crappy system it is. So what???!!! There is huge potencial in the Apple Unified Memory architecture and no other system can get close to it, so it's just a shame Sidefx didn't take advantage of it yet and if they will finally do it your percentage numbers will shift significantly and you would never write such crappy comment anymore!!!

[@morgonaut]

​@@vladyslavlavrenov9167 "Cringe, nobody is jealous of Apple users" - that's not true, because the hate coming from non-Apple users towards Apple users is real and huge. Apple users don't hate other platforms users, it's only one way hate

[@MissEldira]

AMD XPU support wen? Is this not a priority for 20? Or is SideFX becoming an Nvidia only company? The anti-consumer way nvidia works to make sure software prioritizes nvidia really hurts everyone. I hope this is not what is happening with houdini.

[@fastlearner292]

No one is prioritising Nvidia, otherwise SideFX would've used CUDA instead of OpenCL in their GPU accelerated solvers anyways. Problem is Amd is severely behind in a lot of stuff, and getting things to work in it is a problem because not many people have done it. It needs to start with amd taking this seriously instead of smaller companies like SideFX. They are trying tho, maybe in a decade something will happen

[@MissEldira]

@@fastlearner292 Interesting answer and I do not know enough about AMD to judge if that is true. Nvidia tend to force proprietary tech that AMD can not use or is made deliberately to run poorly on AMD. AMD did develop RPR though. My experience with RPR so far is that I can not get it to render locally for some reason, documentation is poor and outdated. I am still diagnosing why everything is so bright and I suspect something is up with specular, but I have not tested it yet. I also just now noticed that rotating UV in mtlx gives different rotations in RPR and karma.

[@fastlearner292]

@@MissEldira RPR is horrible, and just exists as a proof of concept. AMD hasn't really given up so I am assuming they keep updating it to learn about the latest developments in 3d. If you do have a good CPU tho, maybe just stay with Karma CPU, or 3delight (3.0 will support Solaris and it's close to release). Some people tend to really bash cpu and say GPU is the new deal, and while that may be true for some types of dynamic sims, it's most definitely not true for Path Tracing. It might be a bit slower, but now GPU hardware has hit a fundemental limit and we are getting to the edge especially in terms of programming wise, and for cpu there's still lot to come up with. Won't really go into the details but it just has something to do with the architectures and especially the vram side of things with gpu. 3delight is a huge proof that cpu can still be fast, and Karma is pretty good too. I have heard the newest Amd cpu goes really well with them

[@MissEldira]

@@fastlearner292 That is not an option when shading. Simple objects take me minutes to finish. With RPR its seconds. Also you are exaggerating about rpr. Most of it works. Also as you said about karma its openCL if it was just OpenCL why does it not run on AMD.

[@fastlearner292]

@@MissEldira read my comment again

[@AndreiTheBadger]

When is H20 coming out ?