HtoA 6.3.6 now available!

[Stephen.Blair]

HtoA 6.3.6.0 uses Arnold 7.3.6.0.

Installation

• Download Arnold for Houdini from your Autodesk Account. See Download Arnold for more information about downloading HtoA from your Autodesk Account.

• Follow these installation instructions

Enhancements

• Various normal types for triplanar: The triplanar shader has a new parameter normal_type which can be used to select the type of normal to use for selecting the dominant axis for texturing. The options are shading, which is the previous behavior and uses the smooth shading normal (this normal includes bump), smooth_and_displaced is like the shading normal but without the bump, and finally smooth_before_displacing gives the smooth normal before displacement and bump. Note that smooth_before_displacing requires that autobump be enabled. (ARNOLD-15523)

shading	smooth and displaced

shading	smooth before displacing

• Improve interoperability between Arnold and MaterialX shaders: It is now possible to connect Arnold closure shaders such as standard_surface and openpbr_surface to MaterialX surfaceshader shaders such as mix. (ARNOLD-15238)

• Upgrade OCIO: OpenColorIO was upgraded to 2.4.0. (ARNOLD-15477)

USD Enhancements

• shader_override in Hydra: Arnold scenes with shader_override set in the options can be exported to USD and rendered through Hydra now (usd#2119)
• Operators in Hydra: Operators are now represented as UsdShade primitives. Arnold scenes with operators that are exported to USD can now be rendered through Hydra (usd#2110)
• Updated Arnold schemas : Legacy Typed schemas were replaced with API schemas for the corresponding USD node types (usd#2088)
• First support for versioned schemas: Versioned schemas (such as DomeLight_1) can now be rendered in USD and Hydra (usd#2145)

API Additions

• Additional metadata for parameter grouping and types: New metadata added for most base types (such as polymesh, shape, light, and skydome_light to specify information about parameters. (ARNOLD-15674)

  • ui.groups - Information on the grouping of parameters, useful for applications to automate the display of parameters. This metadata was previously available for some shaders only. It is in the form of Group Name 1:param_1 param_2,Group Name2:param_3 param_4
  • ui.hide - This boolean hides a parameter in an interface
  • ray_vis_type - A boolean metadata for parameters that takes a byte value that represents a ray-type mask, for example, visibility, sidedness

Incompatible Changes

• AiMakeTx without color conversion: When AiMakeTx or maketx are run on a texture that has the same color space as the rendering space, a TX file with the suffix "raw" is created, following the same convention as what auto-tx does at render time. (ARNOLD-15636)

• Correct narrow space with the OCIO env var: When the default color manager node is used with an environment variable OCIO pointing to a custom config file, Arnold now use a proper narrow space for 8-bit textures, instead of assuming a narrow space called sRGB. (ARNOLD-15634)

Bug Fixes

• HTOA-2798 - Fixed Arnold Edit Material LOP error when a usdpreviewmaterial is present.
• ARNOLD-12112 - Appending render causes buckets to be added in the wrong AOV
• ARNOLD-15247 - Fixed crash on systems with vGPUs, or GPU in TCC mode under Windows
• ARNOLD-15433 - OIDN treats AtVector as float2
• ARNOLD-15488 - MaterialX published compound with promoted color port does not render correctly
• ARNOLD-15533 - Fixed ordering of parameters in kick info
• ARNOLD-15670 - Crash when modifying vlist on an instanced mesh
• ARNOLD-15645 - Texture resolving not working with search path or path mapping in some cases
• ARNOLD-15587 - Parameter reset on an instance node creates unnecessary array copies
• ARNOLD-15278 - Crash on interactive modification of light_group or shadow_group array
• ARNOLD-15668 - Resetting a procedural node should unload its children
• usd#2129 - Fixed crashes when instancers have empty / invalid positions
• usd#2131 - Wrong transform when an instanceable prim is not xformable
• usd#2133 - Fixed crash when the root primitive is invalid
• usd#2122 - RectLight doesn't take width / height into account with scenes exported from Arnold
• usd#1764 - ArnoldUsd schema was missing from Arnold SDK

• usd#2154 - Fix regression in Husk renders missing motion and velocity data

System Requirements

• Houdini, Houdini FX, Houdini Indie and Houdini Education
  • 19.5.805
  • 20.0.896
  • 20.5.410
  • 20.5.445

[ganquan_charles]

Hi, it works with Solaris, however, it stuck in render view under ROP with license error.

log:

No licenses could be found to run this application.

Please check for a valid license server host.

00:00:04 273MB WARNING | Error 1 when uninitializing ADP.

I'm running Houdini Indie 20.5.445 on a mac.

[Stephen.Blair]

---

@ganquan_charles wrote:

Hi, it works with Solaris, however, it stuck in render view under ROP with license error.

log:

No licenses could be found to run this application.

Please check for a valid license server host.

00:00:04 273MB WARNING | Error 1 when uninitializing ADP.

I'm running Houdini Indie 20.5.445 on a mac.

---

That's a Houdini license message. You now need more than Indie to render to the Render View with a plugin like HtoA.

[ganquan_charles]

Hi Stephen,

Thanks for reply.

I've contacted Sidefx, unfortunately they said it's about Arnold licensing system.

So I'm stuck in between...

Houdini Indie 20.0.896 render view works with Arnold htoa 6.3.6.0 thou.  

[Stephen.Blair]

---

@ganquan_charles wrote:

Hi Stephen,

Thanks for reply.

I've contacted Sidefx, unfortunately they said it's about Arnold licensing system.

So I'm stuck in between...

Houdini Indie 20.0.896 render view works with Arnold htoa 6.3.6.0 thou.  

---

But it's not about Arnold licensing, so I'm not sure why they say it is an Arnold licensing issue. It's about how HtoA uses the Houdini HDK. Until recently, that HDK usage was allowed by Houdini Indie. Now it is not allowed, and Houdini Indie prints that Houdini licensing message.

What exactly did SideFx support say?