egMatLib - A Material Library for Houdini

A Material Library for Houdini Karma, Mantra, Redshift and Arnold and Octane

Features:

Basics:

• Lightweight (Houdini-native) storing and loading of node networks
• Save MaterialX, Redshift Material Builders, Principled Shaders, Mantra Materialbuilders and Arnold Materialbuilders
• Favorites
• Categories
• Searchable Material-Names and tags (use ":" as a modifier )
• Open database (.json)
  • Houdini Nodes are stored in Houdini Format though
• Edit multiple materials at the same time via the Details-Pane
• Easy adjustable custom preview and rendersize, quality
• ACES 1.3 support (both, 1.2 and 1.3 are supported now)
• Unrestricted Houdini Licensing (support Full Commercial and Indie)

New Features in V2:

• complete rewrite
• improve onBoarding Process/Installation
• improved User-Interface
  • drag and drop material from and to Node Editor
  • Remove manual Context Switching for simplification
  • Much better feedback on Thumbnail Scaling
• MultiThreaded Thumbnail Generation
• Ability to swap Shaderball for the Houdini Default
• Improved Preferences:
  • Ability to en/disable renderers
  • Enable/Disable "Rendering On Import": This can be handy if you want to import a lot of materials
  • Set Samples for Houdini Karma
  • Set Complex or simple Shaderball for Rendering
• To import old Materiallibrary files please choose Library/Import from MatLib V1 and select the correspoding .json file

Compatibility

• Tested on 21.0.580 on Ubuntu and MacOS, should work everywhere
• USD/Solaris for Karma only
• Python 3 support only
• Redshift 3.5+ (untested)
• Octane for 20.5.487 (untested)
• HtoA 6.3.7.0 (untested)

Installation

• Download or Clone this repository and unzip
• Copy the provided MatLib.json to your houdini21.0/packages folder
• Edit the line /home/user/MatLib to the location of your downloaded folder, e.g.: C:/Houdini_Things/MatLib
• Start Houdini

Usage

• Open Pane (MatLib)
• The setup will guide you to set a library if none is found
  • Choose a safe folder --> this is where all your data will be stored
  • You also can change this directory later from Library/Preferences
• Right Click Material X Builder (Solaris/USD), Karma Builder (Solaris/USD), Redshift Material Builder, Principled Shader, Material Builder to store a material
• Double Click on a Material in MatLib-Pane to import
• Use the details view to the right for edit of currently seleted material

Acknowledgements

• Thanks to Rich Nosworthy for providing the Complex ShaderBall - https://www.richnosworthy.tv
• Thanks to @thopedam for providing initial Octane Support

Contact

• Found a bug or suggest a feature? please open an issue