Hi there..Im testing out houdini from time to time, usally using lightwave.

I am experiencing extremly slow start of the mantra renderer, it takes something around 16-20 seconds for it to start, is this common?

I believe the earlier builds were a little faster thou.

this is happening on houdini apprentice build 9.5.170
using windows xp 32 bit and nvidia quadro fx 110 pentium 4ghz with 2gig ram.

Michael

Hi ,
Funny you say that , it does seem to take a while to bring up the render window.

Rob

circusmonkey
Hi ,
Funny you say that , it does seem to take a while to bring up the render window.

Rob

If there are shadow maps being rendered, these get rendered before mplay starts. Or if there's a lot of geometry mantra may also take a little while before rendering starts… Or if you're predicing a large scene.

What's happening with the CPU in that time? Is mantra busy?

hmm..well just basic scene creating a new one and just add a box and camera..Ive´turned of auto generate shadowmaps and environment maps..
doesn´t matter wich rendertype I choose either..raytrace or micropolygon, it
takes a long time to start the mplay mantra..around 17-20 seconds.
the cpu goes up from around 2- 60& while rendering.

and I can see in the status bar that the hscript starts an mantra command starts but then no info is shown until the mplay starts to render several seconds after.

Michael

Well..heres what I learned..
the thing is that ..Ivé been closing the Mplay window and that is when it is taking long time to start…if Im having it open and hit render again..it will only take maybe 5 seconds to start.

I thought it shouldn´t be needed to have it open or for the mplay render taking so long to start when first rendered.

Michael

Just guessing here, but could it have something to do with firewall settings on your machine?
I haven't got that slowdown now, but I've seen a similar problem with other software.