I think I made my point regarding IFD's, but here's a real-world example I just encountered where the two-step rendering pipeline cost me a day's time. If you know a better approach, I'd love to hear it. Here is what I did.
I'm working on a sim with a pool of bubbling lava. It's a 900 frame long, reasonably high-detail sim. My workstation has been meshing it since the night before, resulting in a several TB geometry cache. Most of the day has been spent getting my material to look good. I'm hoping to render it overnight. It's late in the day, but I finally get the shader looking good enough for a test render, so I generate my IFD's and send them to Afanasy. A few minutes later, I load up the few frames I've gotten back from the farm, and notice that the UV's are unstable and twitching about. A little bit of research indicates that adding a UVSmooth node to the mesh might solve the problem.
The thing is, I can't just add the UVSmooth node and resubmit to render. I've gotta unpack that geometry, apply the UVSmooth, and re-cache it. All that, and I'm still not sure it will fix the problem. With several TB of mesh data, that didn't finish in time for me to resubmit to the render farm before I had to leave, putting me a day behind.
I don't mean to belabor the point. Yes, spending money for a few Engine licenses would ease the problem, so we might do that. It's still an extra complication that could be hidden away and automated so that I can spend more time being creative and less time administrating processes.
Found 66 posts.
Search results Show results as topic list.
Houdini Lounge » Thoughts on mantra
- BradThompson
- 66 posts
- Offline
Houdini Lounge » Thoughts on mantra
- BradThompson
- 66 posts
- Offline
blackpixel
Yes, but all of the “other integrated renderers” require a seperate license to render or eat a host app license. Mantra tokens are free.
I'm coming from a 3DS Max background where up until last year, both the integrated renderers (Scanline and MentalRay), and FinalRender included 999 network render licenses for no additional charge. The removal of free network rendering is one of the primary reasons we are trying to move away from Autodesk and toward Houdini.
I'm not suggesting making Houdini Engine licenses free, only the IFD generation and probably some of the geo prep stuff so that I don't have to mess about with remembering to pack/cache every little thing, or troubleshoot why IFD generation is taking so long. Let the farm do that so that I can get back to iterating. I acknowledge that I'm new to Houdini, but so far, I don't see the benefit of having to manually manage that process most of the time.
Houdini Lounge » Thoughts on mantra
- BradThompson
- 66 posts
- Offline
Since we're talking about ways to speed up Mantra:
I'm a relatively new Houdini user, acting as a bit of a guinea pig for a small team that's trying to shift away from Autodesk products. One thing that would simplify and speed up the rendering pipeline for groups like mine, would be to remove the need to pre-generate IFD's before running a job on our render farm. As far as I can tell, this is just a licensing restriction.
I've managed to figure out how to use packed primitives to make IFD generation really quick, but it wasn't easy to learn, it frequently slows down my creation process, and it's another thing to manage. Most other integrated renderers seem to be able to create their version of an IFD, per-frame, on-the-fly on each render node.
I like having the option of IFD pre-generation, but it feels like an unnecessary impediment when I want to quickly throw a test in the render queue. I feel like there must be a better way to separate what you would need a Houdini Engine license for, and what you would need a mantra license for. Just my $.02.
I'm a relatively new Houdini user, acting as a bit of a guinea pig for a small team that's trying to shift away from Autodesk products. One thing that would simplify and speed up the rendering pipeline for groups like mine, would be to remove the need to pre-generate IFD's before running a job on our render farm. As far as I can tell, this is just a licensing restriction.
I've managed to figure out how to use packed primitives to make IFD generation really quick, but it wasn't easy to learn, it frequently slows down my creation process, and it's another thing to manage. Most other integrated renderers seem to be able to create their version of an IFD, per-frame, on-the-fly on each render node.
I like having the option of IFD pre-generation, but it feels like an unnecessary impediment when I want to quickly throw a test in the render queue. I feel like there must be a better way to separate what you would need a Houdini Engine license for, and what you would need a mantra license for. Just my $.02.
Technical Discussion » Displaying a Layer Mix material's texture in the viewport
- BradThompson
- 66 posts
- Offline
Thanks jsmack, I hadn't seen that video before and it was SUPER helpful.
To anyone else, the part about OpenGL tagging is around the 34 minute mark, but I recommend watching the whole video.
To anyone else, the part about OpenGL tagging is around the 34 minute mark, but I recommend watching the whole video.
Technical Discussion » Displaying a Layer Mix material's texture in the viewport
- BradThompson
- 66 posts
- Offline
I figured it out. In case anyone else is stuck, the solution is to add a UVQuickshade node into your geometry tree. In the node, specify the texture map that you wish to see in the viewport. There doesn't seem to be any control over the resolution of the openGL map though, so it's pretty rough.
Now I have a new question:
I need to very accurately position a second texture map, with it's own UV coordinates over the first. It's a higher resolution map of just the east coast USA, which the camera will be flying closer to. It will stamped over the larger, full-earth texture map, similar to a decal. I've figured out how to add a second set of UV coordinates, but I can't figure out how to get the viewport to display both maps, so that I can accurately position the decal. In 3ds Max, this is straightforward, but I'm trying to learn/stay-in Houdini.
Any suggestions?
Thanks in advance!
Now I have a new question:
I need to very accurately position a second texture map, with it's own UV coordinates over the first. It's a higher resolution map of just the east coast USA, which the camera will be flying closer to. It will stamped over the larger, full-earth texture map, similar to a decal. I've figured out how to add a second set of UV coordinates, but I can't figure out how to get the viewport to display both maps, so that I can accurately position the decal. In 3ds Max, this is straightforward, but I'm trying to learn/stay-in Houdini.
Any suggestions?
Thanks in advance!
Technical Discussion » Displaying a Layer Mix material's texture in the viewport
- BradThompson
- 66 posts
- Offline
I'm new to Houdini, so apologies for what is probably a very basic question.
I've built a material with two principled shaders going into a layer mix node. Basically, it's a Planet Earth material where the land is represented by one principled shader and the ocean another. I need to see the land map on the earth sphere in my viewport. How do I specify that I want the Earth's base color texture map to be used as the diffuse map on the sphere in my viewport?
I read the section in the manual about tagging a VOP shader for viewport display, but it didn't make much sense to me. http://www.sidefx.com/docs/houdini/shade/opengl [sidefx.com]
Thanks!
Brad T.
I've built a material with two principled shaders going into a layer mix node. Basically, it's a Planet Earth material where the land is represented by one principled shader and the ocean another. I need to see the land map on the earth sphere in my viewport. How do I specify that I want the Earth's base color texture map to be used as the diffuse map on the sphere in my viewport?
I read the section in the manual about tagging a VOP shader for viewport display, but it didn't make much sense to me. http://www.sidefx.com/docs/houdini/shade/opengl [sidefx.com]
Thanks!
Brad T.
-
- Quick Links