Hi there,

I am doing a couple of little tests in Houdini apprentice to see whether Houdini should be my future 3d application.

For testing the render speed, I am trying to render a very basic scene: Just a default cube and a sphere moving around a bit, with a default point light and a camera.

Resolution is set to 640X360

Rendering 10 frames of this scenes as a tif-sequence takes up to 4 minutes right now (pixel samples 1/1, min-max ray samples 1-4).

Not comparing apples to apples here, but cinema 4d takes less than 4 seconds to get something similar rendered. Seeing other peoples obviously using houdini on (probably) similar machines makes me think that I am missing sth. here.

Also, MPlay takes at least up to two minutes to start. The render times don't vary much, whether I render to disk or not.

Here are my specs, and just to be sure, I posted the file below:

Mac Book Pro 2012 Retina Display
i7 quad core, 2,3 ghz
256 GB SSD
Nvidia GeForce GT 650M
OS X 10.10.3

If someone could give me a hint or at least tell me whether this performance is normal, I'd be very thankful.

Cheers, M

The slowness is most likely not the rendering speed but the delay between frames. Houdini on Windows / Linux is better in this respect.
Edit: Just ran a test and the difference is only 10%

One of the worst tests you can do in Mantra is the simple render test; it's a production renderer which will not get bogged down on interesting scenes. It's integration with Houdini is one of it's key points that the standard simple tests simply bypasses.

Two mins to launch MPlay is too long - it should be much quicker. Something is up with your setup in that respect.

Thanks for taking the time to answer, Marty, really appreciate it.

If I am getting you right, you are saying that mantra will perform comparatively better in more complex scenes (=more demanding of calculations), because Houdini does not help mantra in simple scenes.
Is there a technique/setting to somehow make Houdini kick in to speed up the render?
Not that I would want to render cubes all the time;-), but sometimes you just have simple Geo.

I guess I will try some dynamics to compare again.

What difference exactly did you mean by 10% - difference houdini to cinema 4d or your to my render time in houdini ?

Again, thanks for helping out.

There are a few basic things I do to speed up render on simple scene.

Inside the Mantra node in the out network activate the Rendering tab then activate the Render tab, below. I change Tile Size from the default of 16 to 48. This speeds up the render a bit on my hexcore system.

The Shading Quality Multiplier can be leveraged if you have complex materials on objects and simply want to do a draft quality motion test.

I usually turn off Ray variance, it has been known to cause flickering on animation sequences.

Set Min ray samples higher than 1 for better quality.

You can also drop Reflect and Refract limits to zero to basically run Mantra in direct lighting mode. I usually set them to 5,5,5 (reflect, refract, diffuse) for PBR style rendering.

Also, under Statistics try increasing Verbose Level above zero. This will report how long it actually takes to render the scene and other useful bottle neck times that might be occurring.

Don't be afraid of dropping down an OpenGL rop for a motion test either. It is an entirely separate renderer that uses OpenGL acceleration to draw frames. Not all material parameters are supported, however, but for a fast motion test it is kind of like making a draft quality render in Cinema.

MickeyH
Thanks for taking the time to answer, Marty, really appreciate it.

If I am getting you right, you are saying that mantra will perform comparatively better in more complex scenes (=more demanding of calculations), because Houdini does not help mantra in simple scenes.
Is there a technique/setting to somehow make Houdini kick in to speed up the render?
Not that I would want to render cubes all the time;-), but sometimes you just have simple Geo.

I guess I will try some dynamics to compare again.

What difference exactly did you mean by 10% - difference houdini to cinema 4d or your to my render time in houdini ?

Again, thanks for helping out.

MickeyH,

I'm in your same situation. I'm just starting looking at Houdini in my spare time.

Coming from 3ds Max/Vray and working in the motion graphics business, renders time play a very important role for me. What's working great for my needs right now is knowing that if I need to render a complex scene, Pflow or anything else, I can rely on Vray's speed and quality. But of course the same remains true if I need to render simple scenes, which actually happens more often than one would imagine (because it's a fast turnaround, or maybe what is needed it's just a proof of concept or simply because client needs plain, clean scenes).
I didn't get to the point where I know Mantra to such a level that would allow me to know whether simple scenes require longer times than expected because it is just the way Mantra works or because I didn't tweak the proper settings. From what I'm hearing, though, it seems it is true the former, and Mantra just gives its best when it comes to bake crazy amount of data.

Now, if (and considered my lack of knowledge for me it's a big if) this is the case, and simple scenes is not where Mantra shines in terms of speed, I'm wondering what would stop SideFx to address this situation (and hopefully they will do).

verysame
Now, if (and considered my lack of knowledge for me it's a big if) this is the case, and simple scenes is not where Mantra shines in terms of speed, I'm wondering what would stop SideFx to address this situation (and hopefully they will do).

I think you could start by defining the exact criteria of your needs for motion graphics in terms of the visual qualities. i.e. noise-free, no indirect lighting motion-blur etc. then send some tests into SideFx.

MartybNz

verysame
Now, if (and considered my lack of knowledge for me it's a big if) this is the case, and simple scenes is not where Mantra shines in terms of speed, I'm wondering what would stop SideFx to address this situation (and hopefully they will do).

I think you could start by defining the exact criteria of your needs for motion graphics in terms of the visual qualities. i.e. noise-free, no indirect lighting motion-blur etc. then send some tests into SideFx.

Yes, I'm actually thinking to do a comparison test, which for me means start learning first, and then compare.

Basically I'm thinking to take some 3ds Max project from my work, export it to Houdini (and if I'm not mistaken I believe I can import alembic in the apprentice version) and try to re-create the same render, getting light setup as close as possible. Then, figure out how to tweak Mantra settings in order to get the best. At that point I will submit. The whole process should give me (I hope) a basic introduction of Houdini/Mantra.

But first I need to learn!
(the sad emoticon is due to the lack of time vs. how bad I'd like to start learning it)

Thanks a lot for the advice on speeding up the render times, enivbob!

I tried some of your tips, unfortunately they didn't change the render times much. Will try the rop node soon, though, and still have to try with a more complex scene.

@verysame: Yes, houdini indie provides alembic import and export. Haven't tried it, though. Lots to learn still, yes….

update:
Just ran a crowd sim, 10 Frames at Resolution 640X320. To my surprise the render time was pretty much the same as the silly scene with the cube. Rendering at 1280X720 only took half a minute longer, raising the amount of agents from 50 to 300 added only 30 seconds to that render time. very interesting…