Before I ask my question, I suppose a short intro is in order…
I've been using Houdini Indie for a couple of weeks (thanks SideFX for Indie – really!). I picked it up fairly quickly once I “got” a few paradigms. Houdini is really a pleasure to use! I jumped right in and after an hour or so started doing commercial production on some simple 3D logo project. I had used Project Messiah Studio and Lightwave 3D before that (and several modelling apps). My current workflow also includes Syntheyes which plays very nice with Houdini. A recent project includes a truck model of about 5 million polygons and Houdini just shines! I've been doing commercial 3D animation since I got a copy of Imagine 3D for my Commodore Amiga from a stiffy disc on a graphics magazine cover. Since then I have worked as linear and non-linear video editor, VFX artist, coder, web developer, sysadmin, film producer, director, screenplay writer, and more recently enjoying the privilege of setting up a full service production studio with my wife and kids who are all amazingly creative! At this point you may think me a fossil but I'm still only 17 at heart with an able 47 year old body.
I'm really looking forward to learning much from you guys and perhaps also help others!
I currently work on Windows 7 Professional 64-bit, Intel 2600K @ 3.4GHz, SSD, 16GB RAM, Nvidia GTX660. I hope to soon upgrade to a GTX1070 with Octane Render for Houdini.
Here's my question: When rendering a scene where the composition is very similar (nearly identical) from frame to frame, I find Mantra's render times quite irregular.
This scene is a tanker truck on a floor with raytraced shadows and PBR rendering on all available processors with the camera just slightly changing position between frames.
Here's a few recent Frame Wall Clock Times obtained from Alf Progress on the Houdini Console:
6:43 min
6:05 min
4:51 min
5:41 min
6:23 min
5:53 min
6:27 min
4:32 min
6:17 min
6:43 min
5:55 min
7:03 min
4:08 min
6:30 min
Is this normal behavior? That's quite some fluctuation of over 2 minutes per frame between extremes. System RAM usage maxes out at 10GB of 16GB during this render. I don't do much else at the same time, except typing this post, print a document, and email.
Looking forward to your replies!