egMatLib - A Material Library for Houdini

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

New Features 2025

• Added USD/Solaris Support for Karma
• MaterialX Shader saves
• Octane support has been revamped and new Rendertarget compatibility has been added (currently Octane Beta)
• Removed HDAs to provide unrestricted licensing support
• Added new Preference Setting to block rendering of materials on import ¹
• UI improvements: Detail and Cat View can now be hided from the menu

Base Features:

• Lightweight (Houdini-native) storing and loading of node networks
• Save Materialx, Redshift Material Builders, Principled Shaders, Mantra Materialbuilders and Arnold Materialbuilders
• Favorites
• Adding and removing of categories
• Searchable tags (use t: as a modifier ) and material-names
• Open database (.json)
• Material Preview
• Deletion of entries from the database (deletes also from disk)
• Edit multiple materials at the same time via the Details-Pane
• Easy adjustable custom preview and rendersize
• ACES 1.2 support
• Right Click Menus for adding materials quickly from the network pane
• Importing to current network location (pwd()/matnet)
• Double Click or right click for importing Materials into the scene
• Easy installation with packages (see below)

Compatibility

• Tested on 20.5.487 on Ubuntu 24.04 and MacOS, Windows should work too
• USD/Solaris for Karma only
• Python 3 support
• Removed Python 2 support
• Redshift 3.5+
• Octane for 20.5.487 tested
• HtoA 6.3.7.0

Installation

• Download or Clone this repository and unzip
• Copy the provided MatLib.json to your houdini20.5/packages folder
• Edit the line /home/user/MatLib to the location of your downloaded folder, e.g.: C:/git/MatLib
• Start Houdini

Usage

• Open Pane (MatLib)
• On first usage the pane will prompt you for a directory:
  • Choose a safe directory --> this is where all your data will be stored
  • You also can change this directory later from Library/Preferences
• Use buttons for import/export from library
• 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
• Search Function also can search tags with t:yoursearchstring

Additional

• You can move the directory by hand on disk if you need to
• Do not (!) edit the .json file by hand if not needed
  • you have been warned ;)

Acknowledgements

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

Contact

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

Support

I soley do this project for fun and entirely in my free time. If you are using it on a regular basis, consider buying me a coffee.

Footnotes

1. this is useful when importing a lot of materials, to not block the ui on import. Use Rerender Thumbnail option afterwards ↩