Hello,

When I kick off a basic Mantra render it always takes about 35 second to start rendering. Once it starts it's lighting fast. It's the dreaded wait for the render tiles. I also monitored the CPU usage and all 8 cores are flat lined for the 35 seconds until the render tiles start.
In this test scene I have a simple sphere with a spotlight. I don't think it's scene specific because I have tried others with the same results.
The first thing that comes to mind is the licensing.
Also note the licensing diagnostics doesn't report any redundancy.

I have heard reports of the WindowsXP/Vista x64 version having problems.

The same problem comes up on other Windows xp x64 workstations.

Licensing:
I have tried enabling and disabling Standalone mode and it doesn't make a difference.

My system specs are below.

Houdini 10.0.401 Master
License server on same workstation
Windows XP x64
Firewall: turned off
Anti virus turned off
8 gigs of memory
Duel Quad Xeon
Quadro FX 4600
Raid 0


Any input would be appreciated.

Thanks,


Frank Bonniwell

I tried the exact same scene on my Macbook Pro and it rendered instantly.

Any other x64 users experiencing the same problem?



-Frank

I'm on Vista x64 and it works fine for me. Try running mantra in more verbose mode (-V 2) and see if it tell you anything.

It might be the problem of your windows system. I had the same problem on windows with Houdini 9.x before, but no this problem on Opensuse.

heydabop
I'm on Vista x64 and it works fine for me. Try running mantra in more verbose mode (-V 2) and see if it tell you anything.

Hello,


I set the verbose mode to -v 2 in the Mantra UI and below was the output.
Does it make a difference doing the verbose command in the UI oppose to doing it at the command line?

Thanks,

-Frank

Generating Image: ip (1280x720)
Plane: Cf+Af (16-bit float)
SampleFilter: alpha
PixelFilter: gaussian 2 2
VEX Type: vector4
Dither: 0.5
Gamma: 1
Gain: 1
White point: 1
Load Time: 0.375u 1.46s 17.93r
Memory: 35.06 MB of 35.13 MB arena size. VM Size: 290.23 MB
Render Time: 0.656u 1.125s 22.36r
Memory: 133.41 MB of 137.01 MB arena size. VM Size: 801.06 MB

fbonniwell

heydabop
I'm on Vista x64 and it works fine for me. Try running mantra in more verbose mode (-V 2) and see if it tell you anything.

Hello,


I set the verbose mode to -v 2 in the Mantra UI and below was the output.
Does it make a difference doing the verbose command in the UI oppose to doing it at the command line?

Thanks,

-Frank

Generating Image: ip (1280x720)
Plane: Cf+Af (16-bit float)
SampleFilter: alpha
PixelFilter: gaussian 2 2
VEX Type: vector4
Dither: 0.5
Gamma: 1
Gain: 1
White point: 1
Load Time: 0.375u 1.46s 17.93r
Memory: 35.06 MB of 35.13 MB arena size. VM Size: 290.23 MB
Render Time: 0.656u 1.125s 22.36r
Memory: 133.41 MB of 137.01 MB arena size. VM Size: 801.06 MB

I don't know, I don't think so. I do it through the GUI and it works fine. Well, I see nothing odd, except 17.93r on the load time seems high, who knows why, but perhaps someone wiser than I could say something.

Dump windows nad install linux.
Once I tried installing houdini 10 on schwindows xp 32bit and experienced same problem. It was clean install (only essential stuff).

Running Windows 7 64Bit I'm having the same issue (altough it's not 35 seconds, but around 10-12 seconds until the render starts - even with an empty scene).

I read somewhere about disabling the Windows-Firewall and Antivirus should help, in my case it didn't.

But as soon as I disable all network-interfaces, the renderer almost starts immediately! As soon as I switch back on one or more interfaces, even without restarting Houdini/Mplayer, the delay is back.

I tried some network-settings as DHCP/Manual etc., but I could not find any solution (yet).

Hmm, I'd always noticed this sort of behavior and Windows and sort of shrugged it off as it's having to write out the IFD and then render it. Usually it feels OK once mplay has been launched once and is rendering, at least when working on previews. Once I like what I want I usually switch to rendering directly to files or write out the IFDs.

hi!

The reason for this on windows is mostly related to a firewall client, disable it and it should work.

I read somewhere about disabling the Windows-Firewall and Antivirus should help, in my case it didn't.

Tried, did not help.

Run your system monitor and then trigger a mantra render. Watch to see if another app. is called before mantra shows up.
As well, see if the network spikes before mantra appears.

Just discovered something:

I'm ‘using’ three network-devices:

- built-in ethernet (nothing connected atm)
- PCI Wlan Card (normally deactived, problems with signal strengt)
- USB Wlan Card (activated)

If I disable the Wlan cards, the renderer comes up fast, even if the built-in ethernet-card is actived! As soon as I enable either one of the Wlan-Cards, the delay is here again.

In either way, there is no outgoing traffic from my machine. mantra.exe and mplay.exe communicate using IPv4-Loopback.

I had a similar problem when H.10 was in beta. It would take forever for renders to start on windows, but linux was fine. If I disconnected from the network renders were normal. Never had problems with 9.5.

I gave up on it because I dont use windows much, but after having problems with mentalray licensing on linux I traced the problem to my home router, a dlink dir-655. There was a bug in the firmware that affected DNS resolution, and updating it cleared up the slow renders.

Hope that helps, it sounds like something similar.

One of the things that can slow license acquisition with our licensing is a slow DNS lookup. Some ISP's have notoriously slow DNS lookups. In my area Bell-Sympatico is dead slow and without DNS lookup caching I simply can not acquire a license on the Mac and windows has that 30second - 1 minute delay. My other internet ISP has blazing fast DNS lookups and wonderful speeds (their philosophy is to try to route through servers that don't throttle performance or do packet sniffing, two dastardly things that are still legal in Canada and practiced by Bell-Sympatico and Rogers but I digress.)

There are many ways to fix slow DNS lookups. You can go to a 3rd party to provide DNS lookups for you like dynDNS for all os'es or myDNS for linux users. Many routers and firewalls allow you to set up your own DNS. Lots of instructions on the net and your modem/router/firewall. Just google slow dns lookups.
I simply turned on DNS caching on my router and voila, no more huge delays (option was buried in a horrible 80's rpg game-like menu system on the router…)

One fix for Windows users is to use the option stand-alone licensing in the License Manager. That will bypass the DNS look-ups I believe. Not an option for Mac, Linux users or those that use floating licenses.

Other things are affected by slow DNS lookups. Web browser performance being one of them. That initial delay when loading a page? Yep.

!SOLVED!

It was the DNS - just set in my Networkconfig manually two DNS from my provider (instead the 192.168.1.1 from the DLINK-Router) - and voilà - everything perfect!

Thank you very much for your help

Still not clear why this is actually an issue .. never had any DNS problems before. And the DLINK-Router uses the two same DNS I manually entered.

Is this problem only if you are using Wireless? Could you have the same slowness with a Workstation tied to a Network via Ethernet?

Also, will this slowness potentially affect other things like VOPs, etc.?

VOPs are pretty useless here on my work machine as any edit takes about 30 seconds to have the UI come back to editability.


Thanks,
Craig

I haved the same problem with Wireless and Ethernet, the solucion for the two are the DNS confg.

I don't expect anyone to know the answer to this, but is there a reason why Houdini checks for licenses seemingly every time you do something (fire off a render, do something in VOPS, etc.)? Can't it just check for a license once at start-up or once an hour or something?.. This seems like a way to slow everything down quite a bit.

Anyway, I am still not sure what to do with this info since I am at a large corporation with a new IT guy who doesn't know a lot about the networking side of things.

So how do I decipher what is wrong with our DNS settings and determine what they should be set to? And where does all these settings exist? It sounds like it is a network thing and not something I can set from my PC…

By the way, I am on Windows 7.

Thanks for any help.
Craig

So how do I decipher what is wrong with our DNS settings and determine what they should be set to? And where do all these settings exist?

Is this something I can change, or is it more of a network thing that has to be done by an IT guy? (I am on Windows 7 and this is for a network at a large company with the license served from a server.)

Thanks,
Craig