If you are setting up your scene for the render farm and are using Arnold to render, it is necessary to ensure you have used the correct lighting and materials or your work may appear different or not show at all when rendered.
Texturing with Arnold
To texture an asset or simulation in Houdini with Arnold you must first go to the network menu and select ‘Mat’. Press tab and create an ‘Arnold Material Builder’ node.
Double click on the material builder node to open it up, before pressing tab and creating a ‘standard surface’ node.
Once you have done this, select the three lines on the bottom of the standard surface node to open it up and connect the shader to the surface in the ‘Out_material’.
Once you have done this you can go ahead and adjust the standard surface settings, whether that be; colour, metalness roughness and or opacity. Or you can create an ‘image’ node where you would import a file and connect the rgba to the corresponding attribute. For example you could import a colour map which you would connect to the base_colour in the standard_surface node.
To apply the Arnold standard surface to your asset, simply locate and select the main geometry node which you would like to texture. In the attribute editor viewport above you select ‘render’ located next to the transform menu. Then select the tool on the far right of the material box which will open up the material options and you can select the Arnold standard surface you created and apply it.
Lighting with Arnold
Similarly, if you would like to render using Arnold you will also need to use Arnold lights. To view all the Arnold light options, you can open up the Arnold shelf if it isn’t already appearing in Houdini.
Select a light from the Arnold shelf and drop it into the scene and adjust the settings.