Sorry I was out yesterday…
Anyway, I have tried with settings like this:
Default Doubled
Cache Size 768 MB 1500 MB
Reduce Cache size when inactive 512 MB 1024 MB
Tile Size 200x200 400x400
Resolution Limit 100000 x 100000
My PC is running Windows XP and is a Dual Proc 3.6 Xeon with 3 GB of RAM.
Houdini crashes when it is quite far from filling up my RAM.
As for the post-render script thing, it isn't a problem when rendering, it is a problem while interacting with COPs.
Thanks for any help.
Craig
Found 227 posts.
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Technical Discussion » How to avoid memory error in COPs?
- craiglhoffman
- 252 posts
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Technical Discussion » How to avoid memory error in COPs?
- craiglhoffman
- 252 posts
- Offline
Okay, I am getting tired of constantly crashing Houdini when running COPs. Sure I can keep “Clearing Cache” but when I forget to do that in the excitement of getting work done I get the dreaded crash, especially when I am caching animated stuff in COPs.
The weird thing is I seem to run out of memory when my machine has a whole bunch of RAM left.
Is it my Compositing Settings? What should they be (and why aren't they set more sensibly like Shake or Fusion that don't crash all the time)? Can COPs be made to be smart and actually use what my machine has?!?
Thanks,
Craig
The weird thing is I seem to run out of memory when my machine has a whole bunch of RAM left.
Is it my Compositing Settings? What should they be (and why aren't they set more sensibly like Shake or Fusion that don't crash all the time)? Can COPs be made to be smart and actually use what my machine has?!?
Thanks,
Craig
Technical Discussion » Animate Font in Font SOP?
- craiglhoffman
- 252 posts
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Thanks, your method seems interesting, but would it be an easy thing to get a list of all the Fonts to fill up your expression?
I ended up just creating a bunch of SOPs with different Fonts referencing the inputs of the first Font SOP and feeding them to a Switch SOP…
-Craig
I ended up just creating a bunch of SOPs with different Fonts referencing the inputs of the first Font SOP and feeding them to a Switch SOP…
-Craig
Houdini Lounge » Vista + Houdini?
- craiglhoffman
- 252 posts
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I know this has been discussed some before, but I didn't get a clear picture. Are there any inherent problems running Houdini on Vista?
Are there any advantages to running on Vista? (Could it be faster due to better multi-processor management or memory caching?)
Does Vista mess up other applications to anyone's knowledge?
Thanks,
-Craig
Are there any advantages to running on Vista? (Could it be faster due to better multi-processor management or memory caching?)
Does Vista mess up other applications to anyone's knowledge?
Thanks,
-Craig
Houdini Lounge » Old School Blog
- craiglhoffman
- 252 posts
- Offline
Chops are really the most powerful and underutilized feature in Houdini. I am so glad you are doing this and I am learning a lot.
I've always felt that CHOPs would get used so much more if there was a simpler workflow. Like RMB on a line in your SOP Parameters with animated channels (like the “Translate” line in the “Transform” SOP perhaps) and click on a new option “Export to CHOPs” which would take you right to CHOPs all set up with the proper path/channel inputs, etc. and then the last CHOP in the chain with the Export flag set would automatically over-ride the channels that were initially selected in SOP-land. Likewise, clicking on a SOP node would allow you to “Export to CHOPs” and it would automatically set up the Geometry CHOP properly. The old method and workflow should be maintained, but this would get new users using CHOPs quicker with less head scratching.
Anyway, is there any chance your Blog Tutorials get included in the sidefx.com Tutorials section so the general public has a greater chance of being exposed to them?
-Craig
I've always felt that CHOPs would get used so much more if there was a simpler workflow. Like RMB on a line in your SOP Parameters with animated channels (like the “Translate” line in the “Transform” SOP perhaps) and click on a new option “Export to CHOPs” which would take you right to CHOPs all set up with the proper path/channel inputs, etc. and then the last CHOP in the chain with the Export flag set would automatically over-ride the channels that were initially selected in SOP-land. Likewise, clicking on a SOP node would allow you to “Export to CHOPs” and it would automatically set up the Geometry CHOP properly. The old method and workflow should be maintained, but this would get new users using CHOPs quicker with less head scratching.
Anyway, is there any chance your Blog Tutorials get included in the sidefx.com Tutorials section so the general public has a greater chance of being exposed to them?
-Craig
Houdini Lounge » IMPORTING AN ANIMATED MODEL
- craiglhoffman
- 252 posts
- Offline
Does Collada import properly handle all the joint to bone translations and skinning and motion curves and maintain everything?
Or is it baking things?
-Craig
Or is it baking things?
-Craig
Houdini Lounge » IMPORTING AN ANIMATED MODEL
- craiglhoffman
- 252 posts
- Offline
There are MEL scripts around (odforce.net?) that will dump out a series of animating frames from Maya to obj files (one for each frame).
-Craig
-Craig
Houdini Lounge » Houdini for "Mainstream-Users"
- craiglhoffman
- 252 posts
- Offline
I think Houdini needs a more complete set of things that work right out of the box to be more appealing to the mainstream user.
Things like a decent set of modern standard (Metal, Glass, Cloth, Skin, etc.) powerful and flexible shaders (with options like automatically using Vertex Colors, SubSurface Scattering, etc.), simpler GI rendering, as well as pre-constructed OTL's like “Water Surface” (Ocean, Pond, etc.), “Volumetric Cloud” (with settings for “Cumulus”, “Fluffy”, etc.), or other procedural things like “Grass” or “Fire” or even “Hair”, so that people (even experienced folks) can visualize things quicker. This is what Houdini is good at that people have been doing since PRISMs days, yet when you open up Houdini you really start with a blank slate (other than the Help files). I rarely use the standard shaders and end up making my own in VEX, but I would prefer that to be an option rather than a necessity, and new users shouldn't have to do that.
The character rig is a good start, but there is such a wealth of things that could be done quite simply to open up Houdini to a more mainstream user. And they shouldn't have to go to the Exchange and download standard tools.
Granted for final high quality stuff, we will all likely “roll our own”, but sometimes I want to communicate something quickly and find that Maya just does that easier. (I still don't use Maya, but I hate that it has these advantages…)
-Craig
Things like a decent set of modern standard (Metal, Glass, Cloth, Skin, etc.) powerful and flexible shaders (with options like automatically using Vertex Colors, SubSurface Scattering, etc.), simpler GI rendering, as well as pre-constructed OTL's like “Water Surface” (Ocean, Pond, etc.), “Volumetric Cloud” (with settings for “Cumulus”, “Fluffy”, etc.), or other procedural things like “Grass” or “Fire” or even “Hair”, so that people (even experienced folks) can visualize things quicker. This is what Houdini is good at that people have been doing since PRISMs days, yet when you open up Houdini you really start with a blank slate (other than the Help files). I rarely use the standard shaders and end up making my own in VEX, but I would prefer that to be an option rather than a necessity, and new users shouldn't have to do that.
The character rig is a good start, but there is such a wealth of things that could be done quite simply to open up Houdini to a more mainstream user. And they shouldn't have to go to the Exchange and download standard tools.
Granted for final high quality stuff, we will all likely “roll our own”, but sometimes I want to communicate something quickly and find that Maya just does that easier. (I still don't use Maya, but I hate that it has these advantages…)
-Craig
Technical Discussion » scale camera
- craiglhoffman
- 252 posts
- Offline
RAT files do mipmapping and help reduce aliasing/shimmering artifacts a LOT. If you want to use .jpg, you need to greatly increase sampling and quality settings in you rendering and your render speeds will increase a LOT. (And still the RAT versions with lower settings will look better..)
So if you want quality and speed in your renders, change your textures to .rat. If you want to just hack out a quick render, .jpg is fine. It's easy to view your textures with MPlay and save them out as .rat, or do it in COPs if you are adverse to scripting (as I tend to be).
By the way, if you used RenderMan in the old days, it was the same thing- you had to convert all of your textures to it's .tx format- which is functionally equivalent to the .rat format. It's also similar to the mip-mapped .dds format used in real-time rendering using HLSL or Cg to get best quality and the fastest speed in games, etc.
-Craig
So if you want quality and speed in your renders, change your textures to .rat. If you want to just hack out a quick render, .jpg is fine. It's easy to view your textures with MPlay and save them out as .rat, or do it in COPs if you are adverse to scripting (as I tend to be).
By the way, if you used RenderMan in the old days, it was the same thing- you had to convert all of your textures to it's .tx format- which is functionally equivalent to the .rat format. It's also similar to the mip-mapped .dds format used in real-time rendering using HLSL or Cg to get best quality and the fastest speed in games, etc.
-Craig
Technical Discussion » Animate Font in Font SOP?
- craiglhoffman
- 252 posts
- Offline
Is there a way to animate the Font used in the Font SOP (like frame 1 is Helvetica, Frame 2 is Courier, etc.)?
Thanks,
Craig Hoffman
Thanks,
Craig Hoffman
Technical Discussion » Cookie SOP weirdness
- craiglhoffman
- 252 posts
- Offline
It cuts one of the objects fine, and the other one seems cut, but both parts of it show up in one Group, but with an obvious seam where the cut is.
I tried a Facet SOP with “Consolidate Points” on at a higher than default level, instead of a Fuse. I figured that should work.
It seems more like a bug.
-Craig
I tried a Facet SOP with “Consolidate Points” on at a higher than default level, instead of a Fuse. I figured that should work.
It seems more like a bug.
-Craig
Technical Discussion » Cookie SOP weirdness
- craiglhoffman
- 252 posts
- Offline
Sometimes when I use the Cookie SOP it seems to do some weird things. Like I have to have Inside and Outside “B” (or A) both “checked” on to see the result, but both are put into one group. Unchecking either results in the surface disappearing. I can clearly see the demarkation where one is separated from the other like the Cookie should do, but they are joined into one group when I look at the SOP info (0 polys in one group, the rest in the other). No amount of jitter or anything will fix this.
This seems to happen when I do a Cookie on something that was the result of a previous Cookie. (Perhaps it happens other times, but in this example it seems to be the case).
Any ideas?
-Craig
This seems to happen when I do a Cookie on something that was the result of a previous Cookie. (Perhaps it happens other times, but in this example it seems to be the case).
Any ideas?
-Craig
Technical Discussion » Poly surface to NURB (or Poly Mesh?)
- craiglhoffman
- 252 posts
- Offline
Hi, I have a poly surface from Maya that looks like a nice sheet that I want to turn into a NURB surface or Poly Mesh to creep along.
Is there a simple trick to this?
I Shifted the Primtive Numbers using a Sort SOP then “Removed Shared Edges” in a Divide SOP then converted it to Mesh with a Convert SOP and got something that kind of worked (had to play with the Shifting in the Sort SOP to get the tesselation lined up), but it wasn't exactly what I wanted.
The Rows needed to be a different number of “Edges” than the “Columns” for this to work better. Any simpler tricks for taking a sheet of polys that looks good but is badly formed as far as poly/prim ordering goes into a parameterized surface like a Nurb or Poly Mesh?
Thanks,
-Craig
Is there a simple trick to this?
I Shifted the Primtive Numbers using a Sort SOP then “Removed Shared Edges” in a Divide SOP then converted it to Mesh with a Convert SOP and got something that kind of worked (had to play with the Shifting in the Sort SOP to get the tesselation lined up), but it wasn't exactly what I wanted.
The Rows needed to be a different number of “Edges” than the “Columns” for this to work better. Any simpler tricks for taking a sheet of polys that looks good but is badly formed as far as poly/prim ordering goes into a parameterized surface like a Nurb or Poly Mesh?
Thanks,
-Craig
Houdini Lounge » Companies using Houdini
- craiglhoffman
- 252 posts
- Offline
Can someone add “EA Tiburon” under “Florida”?
Thanks!
Craig Hoffman
Visual Effects Director
EA Tiburon
Thanks!
Craig Hoffman
Visual Effects Director
EA Tiburon
Technical Discussion » Large model disappears when tumbling in viewport
- craiglhoffman
- 252 posts
- Offline
That was my first instinct, but this is a pretty powerful card and can push a lot of polys, especially in games. I do wonder if the drivers aren't set up that great for this sort of thing in OpenGL, though.
-Craig
-Craig
Technical Discussion » Large model disappears when tumbling in viewport
- craiglhoffman
- 252 posts
- Offline
Hi!
I have a large model that disappears when I tumble. It works and tumbles fine until I add a Fractal SOP (which tesselates it more). After adding the Fractal SOP it shows up fine, but when I go into the window and tumble, it disappears!
It isn't a clipping problem or anything like that.
Am I running into some caching setting or something? This is a Dual Xeon Workstation with 3 GB RAM and a GeForce 7800 GT Graphics card (256 MB).
Any ideas?
Thanks,
Craig Hoffman
I have a large model that disappears when I tumble. It works and tumbles fine until I add a Fractal SOP (which tesselates it more). After adding the Fractal SOP it shows up fine, but when I go into the window and tumble, it disappears!
It isn't a clipping problem or anything like that.
Am I running into some caching setting or something? This is a Dual Xeon Workstation with 3 GB RAM and a GeForce 7800 GT Graphics card (256 MB).
Any ideas?
Thanks,
Craig Hoffman
Technical Discussion » CHOPS question (game controller input?)
- craiglhoffman
- 252 posts
- Offline
Yeah, fantastically great information in there, but unfortunately I would need a programmer.
Are there any secrets to getting standard PS2-like controller info into CHOPs without programming?
-Craig
Are there any secrets to getting standard PS2-like controller info into CHOPs without programming?
-Craig
Technical Discussion » DOPs question
- craiglhoffman
- 252 posts
- Offline
If I have a pre-fractured column of stuff, what is the best performing way to destroy a chunk of it in the middle and have the top part collapse, etc.?
Basically I want to create a real-time sort of sim that pops off an arbitrary user defined chunk (so no keyframing) and have the rest of the stuff respond appropriately.
I am sure there are different ways to do this, but I was wondering what would be the best way for performance.
Thanks,
-Craig
Basically I want to create a real-time sort of sim that pops off an arbitrary user defined chunk (so no keyframing) and have the rest of the stuff respond appropriately.
I am sure there are different ways to do this, but I was wondering what would be the best way for performance.
Thanks,
-Craig
Technical Discussion » CHOPS question (game controller input?)
- craiglhoffman
- 252 posts
- Offline
Anyone had success driving CHOPs with a game controller on XP?
I want to prototype some game stuff and would like to do it right (rather than using keyboard/mouse CHOPs).
Plus my CHOPs skills aren't the strongest, so pointers to any good tutorials on real-time Houdini stuff would be appreciated!
Thanks,
Craig
I want to prototype some game stuff and would like to do it right (rather than using keyboard/mouse CHOPs).
Plus my CHOPs skills aren't the strongest, so pointers to any good tutorials on real-time Houdini stuff would be appreciated!
Thanks,
Craig
Houdini Lounge » HLSL FX
- craiglhoffman
- 252 posts
- Offline
As someone who writes HLSL shaders at work, this has been of interest to me for a long time. I knew about the experimental GLSL 2.0 shaders a while ago but didn't have a graphics card that could do it at the time, or was it drivers?.. Can't remember.
But anyhow I think the word was on VOPs doing real-time shaders 2 years ago was that to do anything worthwhile with it, people needed graphics cards that could support Pixel Shader 3.0. (Nvidia 6000+ series) due to the limit of shader instructions that Pixel Shader 2.0 supported, etc. and at the time very few people had that, so they didn't think it was worth the time and effort to support it.
Plus HLSL is a Microsoft DirectX thing and they only considered OpenGL support (GLSL being the pixel shader language for OpenGL 2.0). People have hacked Maya's OpenGL in the past to use DirectX HLSL so I wonder how hard it could be to do for Houdini?..
But anyway, we do use Houdini in game creation at EA Tiburon (Orlando, Fl). Not directly, but some asset and texture creation and Prototyping and Pre-Vis. The more I show it to people the more they are fascinated and interested. I think Houdini's procedural paradigm could really be an answer to creating these huge complex “Next Gen” gaming worlds with the same crew sizes as “Current Gen” games.
Craig Hoffman
Visual Effects Director
EA Tiburon
But anyhow I think the word was on VOPs doing real-time shaders 2 years ago was that to do anything worthwhile with it, people needed graphics cards that could support Pixel Shader 3.0. (Nvidia 6000+ series) due to the limit of shader instructions that Pixel Shader 2.0 supported, etc. and at the time very few people had that, so they didn't think it was worth the time and effort to support it.
Plus HLSL is a Microsoft DirectX thing and they only considered OpenGL support (GLSL being the pixel shader language for OpenGL 2.0). People have hacked Maya's OpenGL in the past to use DirectX HLSL so I wonder how hard it could be to do for Houdini?..
But anyway, we do use Houdini in game creation at EA Tiburon (Orlando, Fl). Not directly, but some asset and texture creation and Prototyping and Pre-Vis. The more I show it to people the more they are fascinated and interested. I think Houdini's procedural paradigm could really be an answer to creating these huge complex “Next Gen” gaming worlds with the same crew sizes as “Current Gen” games.
Craig Hoffman
Visual Effects Director
EA Tiburon
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