I am extremely new to CGI, and have downloaded the Houdini learning package.
One thing which puzzles me greatly is the rendering times for Houdini (HD photorealism eg a ship swaying in the ocean or several realistic human characters chit-chatting to each other). If a PC is tooled up with graphics cards, does this help Houdini or is it CPU only ? Is it minutes to render each frame or hours ?
I find generally that 3d software sites only list the minimum requirements to run, but I lack any appreciation of what pushes them at the high end. I'd appreciate any insight.

Rendering is pure CPU, even though you can slow it down even more, if you have insufficient RAM available. The graphics card does not help with rendering, Mantra is CPU-only.

Typical rendering times for final HD frames range from 4 - 5 minutes for simple scenes to hours for complex stuff. For a “ship in the ocean” scene you are looking at 1+ hour, depending on the complexity.

Thanks protozoan.

I guess Houdini is more for big film studios with lots of computers. If one person or small studio wanted to make a Houdini film, are there options to speed up the rendering process eg specialist equipment or online render farm ?

TheLexx
Thanks protozoan.

I guess Houdini is more for big film studios with lots of computers. If one person or small studio wanted to make a Houdini film, are there options to speed up the rendering process eg specialist equipment or online render farm ?

No this is the incorrect way to think. Mantra is fast but because Houdini has a lot of options and controls you can slow it down without having that much of an effect of the final render.

I can render a face with 4k color/spec/reflec/displace/sss textures, tessellated to around a millions polygons with Subdivision surfaces, with HDR environment lighting and an Area light in just over a minute. I could knock that time even lower if i tried harder to optimize my scene. All of this is I do on one machine.

I could also increase the render times a great deal without much of a difference.

edit/ just read you are new to cg, sorry if i am using a lot of word you might be unfamiliar with. But really my message is the same. Also the reason why big studios use Houdini is because of the freedom it allows. Many packages struggle to do what Houdini can. And an experienced user can take advantage of what Houdini has to offer.