Andrei Mikhalenka

Hi,

I am looking for a way to use different point sets for viewport preview and final rendering with a standard Point Instancer in Solaris.

For example, I may have:

100 points for the viewport;
1,000,000 detailed points for the final render.

Both point sets are prepared in SOPs and may contain important custom attributes such as orient, scale, protoindex, IDs, masks, and other data. I would like the standard Instancer LOP to use the lightweight point set in the viewport and automatically switch to the full point set during rendering.

Ideally, the workflow would look something like this:

proxy points → 100 points
render points → 1,000,000 points
↓
Standard Point Instancer

The same prototypes and instancer settings would be shared between both representations. The switch should happen automatically based on viewport/render purpose, without manually changing node parameters before rendering.

I know that Houdini 22 introduced the new Scatter Instances LOP with deferred execution. However, I am specifically interested in using the standard Point Instancer and point sets that have already been generated in SOPs. In many cases, the final points are not a simple procedural scatter that can be recreated by Scatter Instances LOP — their exact positions and attributes must be preserved.

At the moment, it seems that the available solution is to create two separate PointInstancer prims:

one with purpose = proxy;
another with purpose = render.

This works, but duplicates the instancer setup and makes asset management more complicated.

Is there a native Houdini 22 solution that allows one standard Point Instancer to reference separate proxy and render point sources and switch between them automatically?

If this is currently not possible, could something like this be considered as a feature request? For large vegetation and environment scatters, loading the complete render point array into the viewport can be extremely expensive, even when the prototypes themselves are lightweight.

Thank you!

Hi,

Is there any supported way to replace the Houdini 22 splash screen with a custom image, or disable it entirely?

The clustered organic pattern in the new artwork triggers a strong trypophobia-like reaction for me. I find it genuinely unsettling and uncomfortable to look at whenever Houdini starts.

This is not meant as criticism of the artwork or the artist, I would simply like to change it locally for my own installation. Is there an environment variable, preference, or another safe method for doing this?

Thank you!

christopherk
Thank you for all the feedback!

Thanks for the reply!
For context: I work mainly in archviz and I’m actively trying to promote Houdini in this field (both for myself and for colleagues/clients). Little UX improvements like these curve tools make a huge difference for artists coming from other DCCs – they lower the “fear barrier” of Houdini and make it feel less like a hardcore FX-only tool and more like a comfortable everyday modeling / layout app as well.

So even small quality-of-life changes around curves and direct modeling can really help adoption in archviz and design workflows.