Editing Houdini (software) (section)

==Rendering==
Houdini is bundled with a production-class renderer, Mantra, which had many similarities to [[RenderMan (software)|RenderMan]] in its scope and application in its initial incarnation. [[Micropolygon]] rendering is supported, allowing high-quality displacement operations as well as traditional scan-line and raytracing modes. Shaders are scriptable and composed in their VEX language, or by using VOPs; their node-based interface to programming VEX. Mantra (as does Houdini itself) also supports point-clouds, which can be similar in application as brickmaps in Renderman. This allows more complicated light interactions, such as sub-surface scattering and ambient occlusion, to be produced with lower computational overhead. Mantra can perform extremely fast [[volume rendering]], and also physically based [[path tracing|path-tracing]] – a technique which attempts to more accurately model the physical interactions of light and materials.