This comprehensive workshop introduces artists and technical directors to Solaris and RenderMan’s deep integration with USD workflows inside Houdini. Designed for both newcomers and seasoned users, it explores how to harness RenderMan’s latest capabilities to build, light, and render scenes using the USD framework.

Beginning with an overview of navigating the USD scene in the Solaris stage, the course walks through essential RenderMan geometry settings, shader assignment using the preset browser, and material workflow fundamentals. Members will gain practical experience with camera setup, including film back, depth of field, bokeh, and motion blur in Class 5, before diving into advanced lighting techniques using Solaris’ native lighting tools and RenderMan’s Hydra render delegate. The course covers light creation, parameter tuning, exposure control, and mixing. Artists will also explore light linking and using light filters such as barn doors and gobos to achieve nuanced, cinematic lighting effects.

Liam Whitehouse is an Australian-based senior VFX artist who has been in the 3D industry since 2003 and has used RenderMan for many years. He has worked on various projects over the past 21 years, including most recently environments in The Fall Guy, underwater environments in Aquaman 2, Lindon forests in The Rings Of Power, photorealistic canyon environments for The Falcon and the Winter Soldier on Disney Plus, and the hollow earth environments for Godzilla vs Kong, as well as photogrammetry rocks in Avatar 2.

Class Listing

Class 1: Getting Started in Houdini Solaris
Covering the USD translation from Houdini to Solaris, how to view the USD scene hierarchy, switch objects on or off and navigate the scene and the user interface and an overview of the geometry, materials, lighting, camera and render settings used in Solaris in the following classes.

Class 2: Geometry in Solaris
The Solaris Geometry workflow will be covered to set geometry Renderman attributes and the workflow for adding displacement to surfaces. Finally, we will cover adding subdivisions and the render geometry settings to set visibility, trace sets, matte IDs, and dicing.

Class 3: Shading in Solaris
How to create a material in Solaris and assign it to geometry, the different types of surfaces that you may need to assign materials to, how to render SOP Volumes, and how to create Material X networks.

Class 4: Shading in Solaris
How to convert textures, the extensive Preset browser in Solaris, which is a large material library you can utilise for authoring materials and surfaces, and how to create Solo Material / Patterns.

Class 5: Cameras in Solari
How to set Bokeh, Depth of Field, the Shutter, the viewing Transformation, and how to use projection plugins. One of the great strengths of Pixar Renderman 26 is its ability to reproduce the film look of a digital cinema camera with CG footage, so we will cover how to replicate these looks using PxrCamera.

Class 6: Lighting in Solaris
How to create different light types, how to adjust their parameters, the base properties, shaping and shadow tabs, the colour, intensity and exposure settings. The Renderman parameters and how to use the Light Mixer node to control all lighting in one convenient location.

Class 7: Lighting in Solaris continued
How to do light linking using a light linker node, how to use different light filters for lights and gobos to control their shape and outline, and how do you set up and use mesh lights for Renderman in Solaris?.

Class 8: Renderman settings in Solaris
Renderman settings in Solaris, including resolution, output, the integrator and filters, the Solaris Render Settings LOP under the Renderman tab, and Pixar ML Denoising to get noise-free renders for preview or final output.

Class 9: Light Path Expressions
Light Path Expressions are a powerful way to collect and output specific light paths for alteration later, how to setup and control motion blur in Solaris, checkpointing and recovery and how to setup Crytomattes in Solaris.

Class 10: Renderman Kaboom Box HDA
How to use the HDA, which will greatly speedup pyro and volumetric workflows, allowing quick and easy lookdev and rendering of fire, explosions, candles and anything in between. The HDA offers both basic and advanced pyro lookdev controls plus a few presets to get artists going quickly. 

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