Arvid Schneider shows how to create and export PrimVars for an Arnold shading network in Houdini.

Lighting TD Arvid Schneider expressed the importance of using UserData, or PrimVars (Primitive Variables) in previous tutorials when talking about Arnold. Using UserData, you can attach data to any objects set with a prefix. For example, if you had to apply the same shader attributes to lots of objects, but only change one (the same) attribute in each, this is an excellent job from user data Primvars.

In his latest, Arvid presents an advanced SideFX Houdini tutorial where he shows how to create growing geometry and how to export Primvars for the shading network. The tutorial covers various techniques for how to read and apply user data generated from Houdini to control the shaders ultimately.

As always with Arvid’s tutorials, you can have access to the full scene files for this project if you are a Patron. Visit Arvid’s page to learn more.