Hello, while caching to disk using ROP geometry output or File Cache, is there a way to see the playback when you hit save to disk? I want to see the sim as it goes rather than only seeing the progress bar.

Thanks

KyleMartinVFX
Hello, while caching to disk using ROP geometry output or File Cache, is there a way to see the playback when you hit save to disk? I want to see the sim as it goes rather than only seeing the progress bar.

Thanks

Do you mean like in the mplay for the rendering? Maybe try loading and refreshing the geo seq in the gplay? I am not sure if there is a built in solution for that.

The best solution for me so far - save to disk in background. It prompts you to save the last version and when you save and press the button again, it fires the new instance of Houdini, so you can still load your geometry frame by frame with the file node and look in Houdini, while it is caching the geometry in the background. For example, this way I was able to stop the simulation once I found a pleasing looking volume on my disk, so instead of extra hour of waiting for the cache, I can decide if I can stop the process earlier.

Or better yet. Simply install Deadline, it's free for 2 nodes.
Then you can happily submit your sim, watch it's totally houdini-agnostic progress, and scrub your timeline.



L

maybe I got You wrong, but You can use a fileSOP set to write mode, and playback You sim on this node. It will write the result of Your sim to disk, while it displays it. But unless Your sim is quite fast, it would be better to run it in a separate process and playblast it later or look at the cached files

just read the output with a second houdini instance