First of all I'm a quite new user of the v9 beta in fact, but I try to make a tighter friendship with this software. Maybe I don't have to explain the reasons, I think those are quite obvious for everyone in this forum.
The first experiences are very impressive and straightforward but:
for example after creating a grid and a cube on it, placing a spotlight and creating a mantra render node and of course a camera to render from, the phenomena comes up:
After hitting the render button, nothing happens first. Then at the lower left corner the text says “(0%) mantra1 frame 1 : Rendering” and houdini seems to freeze. After a 5-10 sec the soft comes alive again, but nothing else. I'm waiting and the time goes by…and suddenly, after about 40 seconds the Mplay window pops up and the render really seems to start. The rendering itself is not slow at all but to get there is disturbingly long in time. I have to say it prevents me to find out almost anything about the shading-rendering- fine tuning.
Do you have any idea to set ENV variables or tweak our firewall ar anything to speed up the hole process?
Tech.spec.:
2 quadcore Xeon at 2.66Ghz - 8 cores together - so that is why I'm expecting faster respond (I tried to use only one proc. but no diff.)
Nvidia quadroFx 3450 - so the Ati issue is not related
runs on Xp
Thx,
Ferenc Ugrai