Hey guys, I just watched the h10 pyrofx video and was noting how fast the instructors bake times were and how they only took a manner of seconds for a pyro fx fireball. Mine are taking ages. I do understand that he is probably using production grade hardware but im using an e8400 core 2 duo and an ati 4870x2 and its just creeping. I noticed that when he runs the sim he only puts 5 seconds and after it loads the five seconds he has 120 frames worth of render for his smoke effect. Am I doing something wrong. I have mimicked his steps to a T. If I change one setting it has to rebake the whole scene so its a little disheartening to see that I will have to wait 5 mins between each change of a setting just to view that change. I would also like to know how you get a black screen behind your object when simulating particles as opposed to the stock gray (the color in the scene view box). Any help would be highly appreciated. Thank you.

I think it could be due to editing or he already has the geometry already written out. Not fun for viewers to watch the progress bar for a few mins right?

For the black viewport, type ‘d’ in the viewport for display options, viewport tab and change “Light” to “Dark”. I don't have Houdini opened right now but you should be able to find the option easily.

Cheers!
steven

He probably has cached out the files before recording the video.

Jepp and the pyro effects take ages on my computer too. Nothing for single computer users. Too bad actually.

fux00rdb00nsh!t
He probably has cached out the files before recording the video.

Jepp and the pyro effects take ages on my computer too. Nothing for single computer users. Too bad actually.

Ah ok ic. So in other words were probably not going to be able to make good flame and smoke effects on a single computer for our own indy films? That is a bummer lol.

stevenong
I think it could be due to editing or he already has the geometry already written out. Not fun for viewers to watch the progress bar for a few mins right?

For the black viewport, type ‘d’ in the viewport for display options, viewport tab and change “Light” to “Dark”. I don't have Houdini opened right now but you should be able to find the option easily.

Cheers!
steven

Thank you for the help. Its much appreciated. I just wanted to make sure I wasnt doing something wrong.

Hi,

The video was indeed edited for the reasons described. I've been doing a lot of work on the Pyro tools and simulated everything on a single machine, using 2 or 4 cores. Although not as fast as seen in the tutorial., it shouldn't be that bad. It does take time to create a good simulation but all the examples shown in the H10 launch videos were created on a single machine (except the high res volcano like smoke, having a resolution of 1000^3). The low res sims should take about 10 minutes to simulate (up to frame 70-100)

I tend to start on a resolution of 40 to create the general motion and expansion, and gradually pump up the resolution (to about 70) for my final low res passes. After that it's rendered to disk and ready for upressing.I never go above 250 for those

Hope that clarifies things a bit :wink:

Hi. I too followed the fireball tutorial and am currently rendering the result. The performance was ok during the scene setup (after caching the simulation to file which was also quite fast). The thing is that rendering the upres (150 resolution) simulation including the scattering and raytraced shadows (using 1 light) takes forever. after several hours of rendering it has completed 13 frames and as the fireball grows it gets slower. Completing the 120 frames of the simple fireball will take about 1.5 to 2 days. And my question is.. Is this normal? I work on a 8-core mac pro. Thank you.

hairston630

fux00rdb00nsh!t
He probably has cached out the files before recording the video.

Jepp and the pyro effects take ages on my computer too. Nothing for single computer users. Too bad actually.

Ah ok ic. So in other words were probably not going to be able to make good flame and smoke effects on a single computer for our own indy films? That is a bummer lol.

Yes, you can do lots of very high quality flame and smoke effects on a single machine. Naturally it will take more time than a distributed solution in a production facility.
With knowledge and some patience you can do the same quality of work on a single machine at home that is produced at Pixar or Dreamworks (as examples).

I think it took me about an hour to record that 19 minute video as I would pause at the same time as/just before/just after pressing the simulate button and then unpause when the simulation was done.

The plus side of doing up resing, is that the look you get will be very similar to the low-res (but better) meaning that you can do most of your iterations using the low res sim.

You can get the black background in the “display options” (press d when your mouse is in the viewport)

1.5 to 2 days does not seem like a proper time if you are trying to render out the preset. Especially not on 8 cores. It did not take that much time on my machine.

Hopefully Andrew will get a chance to look at this soon and see if anything can be done about the render speed

cklosters
Hi,

The video was indeed edited for the reasons described. I've been doing a lot of work on the Pyro tools and simulated everything on a single machine, using 2 or 4 cores. Although not as fast as seen in the tutorial., it shouldn't be that bad. It does take time to create a good simulation but all the examples shown in the H10 launch videos were created on a single machine (except the high res volcano like smoke, having a resolution of 1000^3). The low res sims should take about 10 minutes to simulate (up to frame 70-100)

I tend to start on a resolution of 40 to create the general motion and expansion, and gradually pump up the resolution (to about 70) for my final low res passes. After that it's rendered to disk and ready for upressing.I never go above 250 for those

Hope that clarifies things a bit :wink:

First of all, Thank you all for your helpful responses. I didnt want to make 4 posts in a row. Cklosters, how do you change the resolution to 40? I just want to be able to test it (im currently learning fundamentals but just want to know this one particular advanced technique as particles is my main focus of visual effects). Thank you all again.

Allegro
I think it took me about an hour to record that 19 minute video as I would pause at the same time as/just before/just after pressing the simulate button and then unpause when the simulation was done.

The plus side of doing up resing, is that the look you get will be very similar to the low-res (but better) meaning that you can do most of your iterations using the low res sim.

You can get the black background in the “display options” (press d when your mouse is in the viewport)

1.5 to 2 days does not seem like a proper time if you are trying to render out the preset. Especially not on 8 cores. It did not take that much time on my machine.

Hopefully Andrew will get a chance to look at this soon and see if anything can be done about the render speed

Thank you Allegro. I appreciate that . I do have one quick somewhat off the wall question, but do the fluids and animation renders take as much time as particles or are the particles among the most time consuming of the effects to render? I guess this question is to anyone that knows.

hairston630
First of all, Thank you all for your helpful responses. I didnt want to make 4 posts in a row. Cklosters, how do you change the resolution to 40? I just want to be able to test it (im currently learning fundamentals but just want to know this one particular advanced technique as particles is my main focus of visual effects). Thank you all again.

There are some really helpfull tutorials on liquids on the tutorial section of this site. You should start there I think..

hairston630
Thank you Allegro. I appreciate that . I do have one quick somewhat off the wall question, but do the fluids and animation renders take as much time as particles or are the particles among the most time consuming of the effects to render? I guess this question is to anyone that knows.

It really depends on what you're doing. Shaders, lighting, how much of it is in your shot all make huge differences…

You can also render particles with metaballs attached to them which have volume shaders… so… it's tricky to give a good answer for this one.

flyinmycoffee
Hi. I too followed the fireball tutorial and am currently rendering the result. The performance was ok during the scene setup (after caching the simulation to file which was also quite fast). The thing is that rendering the upres (150 resolution) simulation including the scattering and raytraced shadows (using 1 light) takes forever. after several hours of rendering it has completed 13 frames and as the fireball grows it gets slower. Completing the 120 frames of the simple fireball will take about 1.5 to 2 days. And my question is.. Is this normal? I work on a 8-core mac pro. Thank you.

Make sure not to use raytraced shadows, as they are way slower for volumes. Use depth map shadows. Also, when scattering is turned on, it's worth your time trying to get some faster results using ipr, if ipr is slow, your render will be slow. And scattering can be greatly improved when tweaking the right settings. I recommend reading the docs on those, as they clarify a lot.

First of all, Thank you all for your helpful responses. I didnt want to make 4 posts in a row. Cklosters, how do you change the resolution to 40? I just want to be able to test it (im currently learning fundamentals but just want to know this one particular advanced technique as particles is my main focus of visual effects). Thank you all again.

This can be found in the pyro node > uniform divisions. it states the max resoulution on a certain axis. Cheers Coen

Hi!!

I had play around with pyro tools and are really really great, the speed is awesome(the uprez thing); i have worked with fume fx for a while, yes is faster but, the pyro tools of H10 are more customisable and the results are more controlable than fume fx.

Great work SESI for the Pyro Tools, and Mario for the Pyro Shader.

Thanks.

Allegro

hairston630
Thank you Allegro. I appreciate that . I do have one quick somewhat off the wall question, but do the fluids and animation renders take as much time as particles or are the particles among the most time consuming of the effects to render? I guess this question is to anyone that knows.

It really depends on what you're doing. Shaders, lighting, how much of it is in your shot all make huge differences…

You can also render particles with metaballs attached to them which have volume shaders… so… it's tricky to give a good answer for this one.

Im sorry, I meant to say bake times. For example, I load up a fireball and press play for it to start calculating. It takes about 5-10 mins to run 120 frames. If I make almost the littlest change I have to let it bake yet AGAIN and wait another 5-10 mins. Thats what frustrates me. I mean, if I change one value by the smallest unnoticeable amount it re bakes it all. Thats going to take forever. I just hope im doing something wrong.

alejandro
Hi!!

I had play around with pyro tools and are really really great, the speed is awesome(the uprez thing); i have worked with fume fx for a while, yes is faster but, the pyro tools of H10 are more customisable and the results are more controlable than fume fx.

Great work SESI for the Pyro Tools, and Mario for the Pyro Shader.

Thanks.

that's great to hear

cklosters
Make sure not to use raytraced shadows, as they are way slower for volumes. Use depth map shadows. Also, when scattering is turned on, it's worth your time trying to get some faster results using ipr, if ipr is slow, your render will be slow. And scattering can be greatly improved when tweaking the right settings. I recommend reading the docs on those, as they clarify a lot

Thanx. That was really helpful. Depth map shadows really sped the rendering up. It's fast now. Man! I cant believe that I can complete 120 frames of a 200 resolution volume simulation setup and render it out, all within a coupe of hours! I love you sidefx! (btw the ipr crashes houdini quite often.. I don't know if it's just me. mac version).

hairston630

Allegro

hairston630
Thank you Allegro. I appreciate that . I do have one quick somewhat off the wall question, but do the fluids and animation renders take as much time as particles or are the particles among the most time consuming of the effects to render? I guess this question is to anyone that knows.

It really depends on what you're doing. Shaders, lighting, how much of it is in your shot all make huge differences…

You can also render particles with metaballs attached to them which have volume shaders… so… it's tricky to give a good answer for this one.

Im sorry, I meant to say bake times. For example, I load up a fireball and press play for it to start calculating. It takes about 5-10 mins to run 120 frames. If I make almost the littlest change I have to let it bake yet AGAIN and wait another 5-10 mins. Thats what frustrates me. I mean, if I change one value by the smallest unnoticeable amount it re bakes it all. Thats going to take forever. I just hope im doing something wrong.

This unfortunately is the evil truth of all simulation software. Each frame is dependent on all preceding frames. So, if you make a change the simulation has to be run from the beginning.
This is one of the primary reasons Houdini's upres'ing is so wonderful. You do the majority of your simulation work at the lowres and then transfer that data to your upres and you just tweak the upres.

flyinmycoffee

cklosters
Make sure not to use raytraced shadows, as they are way slower for volumes. Use depth map shadows. Also, when scattering is turned on, it's worth your time trying to get some faster results using ipr, if ipr is slow, your render will be slow. And scattering can be greatly improved when tweaking the right settings. I recommend reading the docs on those, as they clarify a lot

Thanx. That was really helpful. Depth map shadows really sped the rendering up. It's fast now. Man! I cant believe that I can complete 120 frames of a 200 resolution volume simulation setup and render it out, all within a coupe of hours! I love you sidefx! (btw the ipr crashes houdini quite often.. I don't know if it's just me. mac version).

Good With fluids, knowing what you are doing can save you a lot of time. That's why it's worth reading up on as much material you can find since it will create a better understanding on how to tackle a certain problem within the least amount of time. Also, IPR might be a bit more buggy under osx. I am not completely sure since I'm running Houdini on Linux 64 bit