Deborah R. Fowler
Houdini and Karma/Solaris Tips
Posted Feb 2 2025Updated Mar 7 2025
Tips and Troubleshooting:
Are you really using XPU? See Karma and XPU
Common issues
- Attenuation not on the light? Need a gobo? See light filtering node
- Complex scene crashing in solaris? Make sure you are bringing in your geometry with point instancing
- Culling geometry in
Solaris
- Mesh coming in all as one object? see Karma
Overview - middle of the page
- Noise - how do you scale it? see Karma Textures
Weird looking normals on boxes? 
Make sure you check Vertex Normals On
(or use edge cusp, normal nodes to recompute normals - likely
just a Vulkan preview issue)
- Scene super heavy? Make sure you are using packed geo and when
importing use the point instancer option on your import node (see instancing)
- TIP modeling polybevel tip - similar to mantra and redshift where you can round edges in the shader under the bump, you can do the same in karma using a round edges plugged into the normal in the shader
- TIP Packing making your ramp disappear from your principled shader? Transfer the shopmaterial, not the uv properties in your pack node
rampColorH18InKarma20.5.hipnc