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Work in Progress » Neon Sign - Part 2 - Rendering
- Keith Johnson
- 30 posts
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Nice! Thanks for the rendering tips guys. I have no doubt I can get these render times lower. With time I'll have a better feel for it.
Work in Progress » Neon Sign - Part 2 - Rendering
- Keith Johnson
- 30 posts
- Offline
There was a question on the vimeo comment board about render settings, so I thought I'd elaborate a bit here.
Renderer was PBR, and after tweaking render parameters in a bracketing/wedge fashion, I found the two most important variables in achieving quality versus speed were the pixel samples and noise level. Those are the main numbers I tweaked to flip between a low-quality/fast preview render and the hi-quality final render. The other variable that's a bit hard to quantify, was that I had to increase the shading quality on a few key pieces of geometry (I did this on a per object basis - bumping it up from the default 1 to something around 3-4). As I state in the video, this was mainly to fix what looked like an odd dicing error on large n-gons that were utilizing gridded bump maps to simulate panel seams.
As for the other settings - I found a law of diminishing returns kick-in with the Max Ray samples. It appeared anything over a value of 6 did little to the render. Also, on the limits tab, it was important to keep the Reflect, Refract, and Diffuse numbers as low as possible. Any values above 2,2,and 1 respectively, achieved only a minor bump in quality, but a huge increase in render times. So that's basically the unscientific way I arrived at my render settings! Screenshots for both the low-quality and final-quality settings are attached.
I found with low-quality settings, interactively tweaking the shading and lighting was pretty good…at least good enough for me to move forward without getting frustrated. As I state in the video. With the final quality setting, rendering at 2000 x 2000, the rendertimes were generally around 8 hours. This is on a 2nd generation i7 machine, capable of turboboost above 3 GHz with 12 gb ram. One thing I did notice is that my machine was very rapidly using up ALL of the ram with no headroom, so I imagine it would be a good thing to upgrade that. Thankfully, Mantra does not just crash on you when you hit the ram ceiling, like V-Ray used to be notorious for. Still, 8 hours for a 2000x2000 render seems a little steep. And it still may have been too noisy for animation. This didn't bother me for a small test project, but it could be an issue later if I do full animation work for a production.
Really though, the speed was my only gripe. Mantra was incredibly stable, reliable, and predictable. I don't think I had a single crash or freeze while working with the interactive render, and the dicing error I stated above was the only unexpected surprise that required troubleshooting.
Renderer was PBR, and after tweaking render parameters in a bracketing/wedge fashion, I found the two most important variables in achieving quality versus speed were the pixel samples and noise level. Those are the main numbers I tweaked to flip between a low-quality/fast preview render and the hi-quality final render. The other variable that's a bit hard to quantify, was that I had to increase the shading quality on a few key pieces of geometry (I did this on a per object basis - bumping it up from the default 1 to something around 3-4). As I state in the video, this was mainly to fix what looked like an odd dicing error on large n-gons that were utilizing gridded bump maps to simulate panel seams.
As for the other settings - I found a law of diminishing returns kick-in with the Max Ray samples. It appeared anything over a value of 6 did little to the render. Also, on the limits tab, it was important to keep the Reflect, Refract, and Diffuse numbers as low as possible. Any values above 2,2,and 1 respectively, achieved only a minor bump in quality, but a huge increase in render times. So that's basically the unscientific way I arrived at my render settings! Screenshots for both the low-quality and final-quality settings are attached.
I found with low-quality settings, interactively tweaking the shading and lighting was pretty good…at least good enough for me to move forward without getting frustrated. As I state in the video. With the final quality setting, rendering at 2000 x 2000, the rendertimes were generally around 8 hours. This is on a 2nd generation i7 machine, capable of turboboost above 3 GHz with 12 gb ram. One thing I did notice is that my machine was very rapidly using up ALL of the ram with no headroom, so I imagine it would be a good thing to upgrade that. Thankfully, Mantra does not just crash on you when you hit the ram ceiling, like V-Ray used to be notorious for. Still, 8 hours for a 2000x2000 render seems a little steep. And it still may have been too noisy for animation. This didn't bother me for a small test project, but it could be an issue later if I do full animation work for a production.
Really though, the speed was my only gripe. Mantra was incredibly stable, reliable, and predictable. I don't think I had a single crash or freeze while working with the interactive render, and the dicing error I stated above was the only unexpected surprise that required troubleshooting.
Work in Progress » Neon Sign - Part 2 - Rendering
- Keith Johnson
- 30 posts
- Offline
Thanks guys. Having fun with Houdini.
Werner - thanks! Glad you find the videos useful.
Werner - thanks! Glad you find the videos useful.
Work in Progress » Neon Sign - Part 2 - Rendering
- Keith Johnson
- 30 posts
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Finally got around to shading and rendering this project. As before, I recorded a time-lapse of the entire process as a pseudo-tutorial. Check it out here if you're interested:
https://vimeo.com/125116427 [vimeo.com]
https://vimeo.com/125116427 [vimeo.com]
SI Users » Neon Sign - Timelapse
- Keith Johnson
- 30 posts
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SI Users » Neon Sign - Timelapse
- Keith Johnson
- 30 posts
- Offline
Thanks very much. I've heard good things about MoI, just never took the opportunity to try it.
Currently working on shading/lighting (part 2) and having a lot of fun using Houdini for this.
Currently working on shading/lighting (part 2) and having a lot of fun using Houdini for this.
Work in Progress » Neon Sign - Timelapse
- Keith Johnson
- 30 posts
- Offline
SI Users » Neon Sign - Timelapse
- Keith Johnson
- 30 posts
- Offline
Just recorded a timelapse video of my first “actual” modeling project in Houdini. Yeah, it's long and tedius, but maybe some of you will benefit from seeing all of the steps.
https://vimeo.com/122274907 [vimeo.com]
I wasn't sure where the best place was to post this in the forum…Since I'm a longtime Softimage user, I felt it was also valuable to post here for SI specific questions/comments. However, I've also added it to the WIP section, along with a downloadable scene file
https://www.sidefx.com/index.php?option=com_forum&Itemid=172&page=viewtopic&p=173623#173623 [sidefx.com]
(moderator - feel free to move this or the other post as necessary).
Thanks!
https://vimeo.com/122274907 [vimeo.com]
I wasn't sure where the best place was to post this in the forum…Since I'm a longtime Softimage user, I felt it was also valuable to post here for SI specific questions/comments. However, I've also added it to the WIP section, along with a downloadable scene file
https://www.sidefx.com/index.php?option=com_forum&Itemid=172&page=viewtopic&p=173623#173623 [sidefx.com]
(moderator - feel free to move this or the other post as necessary).
Thanks!
Work in Progress » Neon Sign - Timelapse
- Keith Johnson
- 30 posts
- Offline
Working on my first “actual” modeling project inside Houdini. Not the most complex or sexiest project, but I learned a lot and thought it might be valuable for others. Rather than just show the finished model, I chose to record the entire process realtime as I worked, then sped it up 10X. Yeah I know, this is a long video that drags on, but hey, skip around if you like.
https://vimeo.com/122274907 [vimeo.com]
This is Part 1, which is the modeling. Part 2 will be shading, lighting, and rendering. Hopefully I'll get to that in a couple of weeks.
If you're interested, the scene file is attached.
https://vimeo.com/122274907 [vimeo.com]
This is Part 1, which is the modeling. Part 2 will be shading, lighting, and rendering. Hopefully I'll get to that in a couple of weeks.
If you're interested, the scene file is attached.
SI Users » Softimage, ICE and Houdini translation...
- Keith Johnson
- 30 posts
- Offline
Hi Rob, here's one I did awhile back. It shows how to recreate ICE modulate by Null in Houdini and presents some basic correlations between ICE and VOPS
https://vimeo.com/93915199 [vimeo.com]
good luck!
https://vimeo.com/93915199 [vimeo.com]
good luck!
SI Users » Can you work quickly in Houdini?
- Keith Johnson
- 30 posts
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After being quite depressed over the demise of Softimage with it's perfect balance of being fast and flexible, I am at least feeling very optimistic about Houdini. I've been doggedly gaining information and experience for perhaps 6-9 months, and while, I may never be as fast as I was in Softimage, I do feel I could get say, 80% of the way there with Houdini.
With H14, I continue to be pleasantly surprised with strides towards a more efficient user experience. 2 very simple but extremely useful things are the middle mouse transform while the curser is off handle (exactly like SI - thank you!!) as well as the quite good pre-selection highlighting and edge/poly loop tools - very SI-like. This is making me smile. If this progress continues, I have no doubt Houdini can become my primary content creation tool as Softimage has. Can I get to 100% speed. I'm not sure, but I'll take 80-90, given the power of what can be created with this tool.
I don't know about your experience learning SI, but I do have to remind myself that it took me a good 2-3 years in using SI on a daily basis before I would consider myself “fast”. What kept me going and building my skill was that it was incredibly fun to use SI and to get better. I have to say, I'm really enjoying the experience of using Houdini.
Hope that helps a bit. And like you say, in the meantime, continue using Softimage when you have a rapid job turnaround. That's probably what I'll be doing for the next several years honestly. In the meantime I hope to build new skills when I can to make the transition at a comfortable pace.
With H14, I continue to be pleasantly surprised with strides towards a more efficient user experience. 2 very simple but extremely useful things are the middle mouse transform while the curser is off handle (exactly like SI - thank you!!) as well as the quite good pre-selection highlighting and edge/poly loop tools - very SI-like. This is making me smile. If this progress continues, I have no doubt Houdini can become my primary content creation tool as Softimage has. Can I get to 100% speed. I'm not sure, but I'll take 80-90, given the power of what can be created with this tool.
I don't know about your experience learning SI, but I do have to remind myself that it took me a good 2-3 years in using SI on a daily basis before I would consider myself “fast”. What kept me going and building my skill was that it was incredibly fun to use SI and to get better. I have to say, I'm really enjoying the experience of using Houdini.
Hope that helps a bit. And like you say, in the meantime, continue using Softimage when you have a rapid job turnaround. That's probably what I'll be doing for the next several years honestly. In the meantime I hope to build new skills when I can to make the transition at a comfortable pace.
Technical Discussion » proper sRGB viewer LUT
- Keith Johnson
- 30 posts
- Offline
I've been doing some color-critical work of late which inspired me to try to achieve 100% viewer matching across multiple apps. In my mind, if it looks correct in Nuke, then it's correct. The viewer LUTs and colorspace transforms are very straightforward. It was rather difficult for me to achieve a 100% match in the Houdini viewer - it's especially noticeable in the shadows - but I finally got it.
I realized that my confusion stemmed from the subtle yet noticeable difference between viewing linear images through a simple 2.2 gamma curve (Houdini's default, as well as most other 3D apps), versus an actual sRGB LUT. Nuke uses an sRGB LUT by default, which I always thought was the right way to go, given my monitor is properly calibrated to sRGB, and I have other apps like PS setup to use an sRGB ICC profile.
This of course led me to try to get a proper linear-to-sRGB LUT to work in Houdini which was kind of a pain. There's a method in Nuke for LUT generation using a CMSpattern, but the resulting .blut file was way off when I imported it into Houdini (I think that had something to do with the necessity of a 1D prelut before the blut's 3D transform, but I could never quite figure it out). The other solution was to generate a LUT using the OCIO libraries in a shell scenario (I'm no programmer and I couldn't quite crack how to get ocio working in a custom environment)…or…create a LUT using a CHOPS or COPS network - again, it was a simple matter to save out the lut from a COPS net, but I couldn't quite figure out how to program in the specific sRGB transfer function. (I still consider myself a new Houdini user )
Long story short: This all led me down the rabbit-hole to wikipedia, grabbing the sRGB transfer function, and simply coding an ascii tab-delimited lut using python. It took some trial and error. I was on the right track and able to generate a 10-bit (1024 step) LUT which worked reasonably well but still noticeably different from the Nuke LUT. Finally when I upped the resolution to a 14-bit LUT (16,000+ steps) I had perceptually a perfect match between what I was viewing in Houdini versus Nuke.
So, I lay this all out if anyone else has had difficulty in getting luts to work in Houdini. The resulting lut is attached if you need it and find it useful. This whole thing made me wonder if it's simply better to stick to gamma 2.2, if it's more efficient for the graphics processing, or if that all really matters. I assume the sRGB spec is there for a reason, and if it's what we calibrate our monitors to, it'd be best to match it everywhere in every app to simplify/unify the grading process. Yes, it's a subtle difference, but it was bugging me.
I realized that my confusion stemmed from the subtle yet noticeable difference between viewing linear images through a simple 2.2 gamma curve (Houdini's default, as well as most other 3D apps), versus an actual sRGB LUT. Nuke uses an sRGB LUT by default, which I always thought was the right way to go, given my monitor is properly calibrated to sRGB, and I have other apps like PS setup to use an sRGB ICC profile.
This of course led me to try to get a proper linear-to-sRGB LUT to work in Houdini which was kind of a pain. There's a method in Nuke for LUT generation using a CMSpattern, but the resulting .blut file was way off when I imported it into Houdini (I think that had something to do with the necessity of a 1D prelut before the blut's 3D transform, but I could never quite figure it out). The other solution was to generate a LUT using the OCIO libraries in a shell scenario (I'm no programmer and I couldn't quite crack how to get ocio working in a custom environment)…or…create a LUT using a CHOPS or COPS network - again, it was a simple matter to save out the lut from a COPS net, but I couldn't quite figure out how to program in the specific sRGB transfer function. (I still consider myself a new Houdini user )
Long story short: This all led me down the rabbit-hole to wikipedia, grabbing the sRGB transfer function, and simply coding an ascii tab-delimited lut using python. It took some trial and error. I was on the right track and able to generate a 10-bit (1024 step) LUT which worked reasonably well but still noticeably different from the Nuke LUT. Finally when I upped the resolution to a 14-bit LUT (16,000+ steps) I had perceptually a perfect match between what I was viewing in Houdini versus Nuke.
So, I lay this all out if anyone else has had difficulty in getting luts to work in Houdini. The resulting lut is attached if you need it and find it useful. This whole thing made me wonder if it's simply better to stick to gamma 2.2, if it's more efficient for the graphics processing, or if that all really matters. I assume the sRGB spec is there for a reason, and if it's what we calibrate our monitors to, it'd be best to match it everywhere in every app to simplify/unify the grading process. Yes, it's a subtle difference, but it was bugging me.
SI Users » RIG of Alien
- Keith Johnson
- 30 posts
- Offline
If I'm not mistaken, the behavior you are seeing has to do with whether the viewport grid is visible. If the grid is turned off, grabbing the center handle of the transform will move it in screen space. If the grid is visible, it will move in a plane parallel to the grid. Try turning the grid on and off and see if that does it.
SI Users » Building a Pendulum Wave
- Keith Johnson
- 30 posts
- Offline
Hmmm, that's strange the file won't open for you. Perhaps it's something to do with older Houdini builds not recognizing the newish Indie .hiplc file format? I'm using 13.0.509. I've heard of some people having luck simply renaming the .hiplc file format to .hipnc. Might do the trick.
If anyone else has a problem, let me know and I'll see if I can save as a different file (if that's possible).
One thing, upon initially opening, you'll likely have to zoom way up as the scene units are in 1.0 = 1 meter
Thanks.
If anyone else has a problem, let me know and I'll see if I can save as a different file (if that's possible).
One thing, upon initially opening, you'll likely have to zoom way up as the scene units are in 1.0 = 1 meter
Thanks.
Houdini Learning Materials » Building a Pendulum Wave
- Keith Johnson
- 30 posts
- Offline
**note - out of habit, I posted this over in the SI section, but it might be of interest for anyone learning Houdini:
I came across this pendulum contraption made with bowling balls, and thought it would be cool to recreate it in Houdini.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YhMiuzyU1ag [youtube.com]
After working it out and stumbling a little bit, I felt like this might be good material for another tutorial video. So here's what I put together:
https://vimeo.com/106083811 [vimeo.com]
Apologies for the length (I have trouble explaining things quickly and to the point).
If you'd like to check out the hip file, it's in my other post:
www.sidefx.com/index.php?option=com_forum&Itemid=172&page=viewtopic&t=34208 [sidefx.com]
I came across this pendulum contraption made with bowling balls, and thought it would be cool to recreate it in Houdini.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YhMiuzyU1ag [youtube.com]
After working it out and stumbling a little bit, I felt like this might be good material for another tutorial video. So here's what I put together:
https://vimeo.com/106083811 [vimeo.com]
Apologies for the length (I have trouble explaining things quickly and to the point).
If you'd like to check out the hip file, it's in my other post:
www.sidefx.com/index.php?option=com_forum&Itemid=172&page=viewtopic&t=34208 [sidefx.com]
SI Users » Building a Pendulum Wave
- Keith Johnson
- 30 posts
- Offline
Hello fellow SI transitioners. I stumbled on a cool demo video showing a giant pendulum contraption made with bowling balls, and thought it would be cool to recreate it in Houdini.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YhMiuzyU1ag [youtube.com]
After working it out and stumbling a little bit, I felt like this might be good material for another tutorial video. So here's what I put together:
https://vimeo.com/106083811 [vimeo.com]
Apologies for the length (I have trouble explaining things quickly and to the point).
Houdini file attached if you're interested.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YhMiuzyU1ag [youtube.com]
After working it out and stumbling a little bit, I felt like this might be good material for another tutorial video. So here's what I put together:
https://vimeo.com/106083811 [vimeo.com]
Apologies for the length (I have trouble explaining things quickly and to the point).
Houdini file attached if you're interested.
Work in Progress » 30 sec of randomized RnD
- Keith Johnson
- 30 posts
- Offline
SI Users » RIG of Alien
- Keith Johnson
- 30 posts
- Offline
Max - this is looking really nice.
I'd love to hear what you think of the rigging workflow in houdini, especially as related to bendy/squishy cartoon rigs that require layers of deformations and shapes.
Are you rigging the same way you did in xsi ?(I'm assuming that's where you're coming from). Or have you had to adapt to new methods? How is the performance of the rig?
Thanks!
I'd love to hear what you think of the rigging workflow in houdini, especially as related to bendy/squishy cartoon rigs that require layers of deformations and shapes.
Are you rigging the same way you did in xsi ?(I'm assuming that's where you're coming from). Or have you had to adapt to new methods? How is the performance of the rig?
Thanks!
SI Users » Possible to edit multiple objects at same time?
- Keith Johnson
- 30 posts
- Offline
…glad to hear I'm not the only one who finds this functionality useful. Honestly, I never gave it a second thought in SI because it just seemed natural - seemed weird how much I was struggling in Houdini to try to do the same thing.
Chris TC is correct, in that - if the scene was modeled procedurally, all objects would be related back to some source geo node that you could edit and ripple the rest down the chain, but I'm sure there are many situations where this wouldn't be the case, for example if the geometry is a set of imported obj's created outside of Houdini.
Chris TC is correct, in that - if the scene was modeled procedurally, all objects would be related back to some source geo node that you could edit and ripple the rest down the chain, but I'm sure there are many situations where this wouldn't be the case, for example if the geometry is a set of imported obj's created outside of Houdini.
SI Users » Softimage to Houdini guides
- Keith Johnson
- 30 posts
- Offline
Really great information Jordi.
I'm picking up a tremendous amount of insight from these guides. I hope you are not burning out on the extensive work that goes into creating them.
Thanks for the hard work and let us know if you ever plan to put up some kind of donation link.
I'm picking up a tremendous amount of insight from these guides. I hope you are not burning out on the extensive work that goes into creating them.
Thanks for the hard work and let us know if you ever plan to put up some kind of donation link.
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