Hey guys. I've been trying to make Houdini my default package for most of my work - previz, animation, shading and rendering (coming from Cinema4D).
I've been having performance issues, but i'm pretty sure there's better ways to animate inside Houdini that make it smoother.
I've attached an example of what i'm doing (can't show this specific product).
I cannot get real time preview of this animation, something that I could get in cinema 4D with deformers, for example.
I'm sure i'm missing important optimization steps for animation, could you guys give me some pointers in that direction?


Thanks in advance.

Welcome to Houdini world(I also come from C4D ). I am not animation but I have noticed that Blast nodes can have a big impact on your performance and I can see you are using quite some. Together with deformers, I don't think they are the best combo when animating. I might be wrong though. Simply try Bypass Blast nodes and try how is the performance.

SIgor420
Welcome to Houdini world(I also come from C4D ). I am not animation but I have noticed that Blast nodes can have a big impact on your performance and I can see you are using quite some. Together with deformers, I don't think they are the best combo when animating. I might be wrong though. Simply try Bypass Blast nodes and try how is the performance.

Thanks for your answer SIgor420! I've also noticed that blast nodes can impact performance a lot, specially on more complex geometry - my guess is that if you cache the blasts, avoiding the node calculating every frame, can help. But in this case, even if I deactivate the blast nodes, the animation is still slow. It's probably because of all the bend nodes, but I'm still not sure about alternatives...

andregodinh

SIgor420
Welcome to Houdini world(I also come from C4D ). I am not animation but I have noticed that Blast nodes can have a big impact on your performance and I can see you are using quite some. Together with deformers, I don't think they are the best combo when animating. I might be wrong though. Simply try Bypass Blast nodes and try how is the performance.

Thanks for your answer SIgor420! I've also noticed that blast nodes can impact performance a lot, specially on more complex geometry - my guess is that if you cache the blasts, avoiding the node calculating every frame, can help. But in this case, even if I deactivate the blast nodes, the animation is still slow. It's probably because of all the bend nodes, but I'm still not sure about alternatives...

Your welcome. I wish I could help more. You can try using KiniFX and Delete node instead. I think it has better performance. Also, KiniFX is not that hard to use.

Not getting rt playback with only 20k polygons is quite weird.
Could you attach an example file?

Andr
Not getting rt playback with only 20k polygons is quite weird.
Could you attach an example file?

Andr, i could try, but this is a client project that I can't share, and also i'm loading an alembic file (would have to send as well) - i should've mentioned this.
But here is a screenshot from the full tree from the start.
I've also attached an example file with a grid with an approximate number of polygons. Even though it's faster, it still doesn't play realtime for me.


thanks so much

I get stable 25fps with the example provided, but I can see a decrease in FPS once I raise the resolution.
Those 3 "bend nodes" hit heavily on the computation.
You could append a cache node at the end of the network, so you could at least have a smooth playback after the first non-smooth run.

Anyway, I wonder if there's some math trick to merge those 3 twist computations into a single one to save come cpu time(like it happens in some compositing software with 'concatenation').

Andr
I get stable 25fps with the example provided, but I can see a decrease in FPS once I raise the resolution.
Those 3 "bend nodes" hit heavily on the computation.
You could append a cache node at the end of the network, so you could at least have a smooth playback after the first non-smooth run.

Anyway, I wonder if there's some math trick to merge those 3 twist computations into a single one to save come cpu time(like it happens in some compositing software with 'concatenation').

Thanks Andr, it's wierd that i can't get RT even with that grid I've sent you. Still, they seem like simple operations compared to what houdini can usually handle. I've been having this issue in "custom"/manual animation for some time, always wondered if it was my methods.

In general if you take a look at the Performance Monitor (alt Y or under Windows menu) it can tell you the bottlenecks and where a cache node might be needed. Viewport response is less than ideal in Houdini but can usually be worked around. Unpacking the alembic file per frame will take a bit of CPU. If the abc is static then only import the first frame, then unpack, blast, cache to native bgeo and start there. Might make it a smidge better.

andregodinh

Andr
I get stable 25fps with the example provided, but I can see a decrease in FPS once I raise the resolution.
Those 3 "bend nodes" hit heavily on the computation.
You could append a cache node at the end of the network, so you could at least have a smooth playback after the first non-smooth run.

Anyway, I wonder if there's some math trick to merge those 3 twist computations into a single one to save come cpu time(like it happens in some compositing software with 'concatenation').

Thanks Andr, it's wierd that i can't get RT even with that grid I've sent you. Still, they seem like simple operations compared to what houdini can usually handle. I've been having this issue in "custom"/manual animation for some time, always wondered if it was my methods.

When I tried the demo scene, the performance monitor showed the geometry calculation time was only 0.004s per frame, or 200 fps. The rest of the time was updating the viewport. The framerate you observe interactively will be highly dependent on gpu performance. On my Intel integrated graphics I'm seeing between 20 and 30 fps, but on a discrete gpu I'm seeing anywhere from 60 to 100fps.

thanks @Anthony Morrelle, will give those things a try.

@jsmack, I have 2 GTX 1080 Ti. I don't get anywhere near 60 to 100fps. It makes sense what you are saying, and I was wondering if houdini was using my gpu at all, but in the "about houdini" and in "preferences>miscellaneous" it seems to be identified. So I'm still not sure why it is so slow!