I am loading in some fbx files that were created in Maya to run through a ripple solver. I tested the scene using just basic planes for the geometry, which gave me a 3 mb Houdini file when I saved it. Once the fbx was imported and everything was linked up, the file size broke 2 gb and took forever to save. Am I doing something wrong with the fbx import of the saving of the file?

Or could this have something to do with the chop data that is running the vertex cache?

Because when I save the file, I also get this error:

“Error: Saving to stream failed (ref: CPIO Packet Close Write <Invalid argument>
obj/RnD_ripples_v0002_fbx/fbx_chops/left_wing_chopfile.data).
Operator save failed.”

If you look in the nodes fbx gives you after you merge/import you will notice at the base of them all is a file node that has been locked. This does the same mechanism that locking normally does, takes a snapshot of that point and saves the geometry with the hip file. So I would have to guess your fbx file is quite large(or the geometry is quite dense). The easiest solution is to unlock all the base file nodes in the fbx import!

That worked, thanks for the help.

An other tip might be to write out the geometries to bgeos after import.
I don't really trust FBX files so I have script which writes out all the selected nodes from an FBX and writes out a bgeo-file read in from a File SOP instead.

Klockworks
The easiest solution is to unlock all the base file nodes in the fbx import!

Just be aware though that once you do this, the .hip file will need to load the geometry from the FBX file upon cooking those File nodes. So if you give your .hip to someone else, you will also have to supply the reference FBX file.