My SOP animations usually evaluate realtime at 25 FPS, but I have to render 50 FPS.

There is an option in the "Global Animation Options" to STEP the playback, but I am not sure if that works as expected.

I have tried these:

Integer Frame Values: ON STEP: 10
(extreme step value to test)
Houdini still tries to playback 50 FPS. There is no skipping in the viewport.
CPU load is the same as without stepping.

Integer Frame Values: OFF STEP: 10
Houdini skips frames.
Viewport reports low FPS (the FPS number in viewport should be green if Houdini manages to playback in realtime)


Please, do you use these? What is your experience and best practices, please?

What would seem logical to me would be this:

- Project FPS set to 50
- Integer Frame Values: ON
- Step: 2
- Viewport playing in realtime would report green 25, as in this image

It is also unfortunate, that these settings snap the Time Bar (the Playhead) to the frames in steps (1,3,5,...)

- Integer Frame Values: ON
- Step: 2

I am still curious, if anybody uses these, what is your experience and best practices, please?

Client demands for higher FPS and complexity of the scenes is growing.

Please, do you have an idea, how could I achieve these settings?

Viewport playback preview: 25 FPS
Project render setting: 50 FPS

The whole issue is described above.

The main issue is, that the computer often cannot maintain the realtime preview of 50 FPS.

I've had luck with the Maintain realtime playback, possibly skip frames option to automatically skip frames when the scene is too slow.


Also the Integer Frames: Off + step 5 seems to report a quite stable green fps here.