Solaris is a Look Development rendering environment. Which is based solely on USD data and workflows. When importing data from OBJ context from Houdini, Houdini will on its own convert all objects into USD before we are able to do anything within that environment. Importing from outside, files must be USD files.

On startup, Karma XPU must compile shaders into device-specific formats. This process will cause the XPU to pause/stutter when you load a new scene or enable a new feature. The compiled results are cached, so rendering the same scene will not pause for shader compilation after the first time. @

• Importing Color from Geo Containers to Solaris and mixing with Mat, can only be done with Principle Shader and XPU / CPU

Additional Nodes

• Stage Manager (for editing USD scenes)
• Graf Branches (can be used for exporting individual objects as USD)

Scene Graph Path

• is an output of whatever we have in our node stream (Scene Imports, Lights, Materials)
• things cant be renamed inside a Graphs

Takeaways:

• Don't worry about USD if you are one guy person. USD mostly meant for big studios to use.

• Solaris is a playground and no right way to do it as everyone seems to be using Solaris differently

• Similar to Maya but more convenient

• Solaris is hackable and a lot of cool stuff can be done

• Destination Path: / is the Scene Graph name which comes after the Root /