Christoph Fasching

I’m trying to build a simple sequential caching pipeline in Houdini TOPs using ROP Fetch nodes, but I clearly don’t understand the intended workflow.

My goal is straightforward:

I have about 10 - 15 different cache nodes
Most but not all are unrelated to each other
I want them to run one after another
Each stage should fully finish before the next begins

Example:

Cache A (240 Frames) → Cache B (only one "Frame" needed, not time dependant) → Cache C (a Sim with 240 Frames)

Some caches are frame ranges/sims, others are single-shot/static exports.

The problems I keep running into:

Chaining ROP Fetch nodes directly seems to multiply work items/frames unexpectedly
Wait for All doesn’t seem to behave the way I expect
Downstream nodes sometimes start cooking even when upstream isn’t finished
I don’t understand when to use:
All Upstream Items are Generated
All Upstream Items are Cooked
batching
Single Frame vs Frame Range
ROP Node Configuration

I feel like I’m missing the core mental model of how TOPs wants dependencies and work item generation to work.

What is the standard/simple production workflow for sequential cache stages in TOPs? Especially when mixing:

sims
frame-based caches
static exports

I’m not trying to build a giant distributed farm setup. I mostly just want a reliable “do this, then this, then this” cache pipeline without unexpected parallelism or frame explosions.

I think the discussion is mixing UI and UX together.

The original post is mostly about UX/performance
responsiveness, smooth window dragging, viewport interaction during heavy operations, etc.

The later replies are more about UI/readability
fonts, contrast, spacing, visibility, information hierarchy.

For me personally the UI is mostly fine, but the UX is really lacking in some areas. For example, the SideFX Labs reset viewport tool should not be as essential as it currently is for me. I run into many situations during the day where the viewport stops displaying things correctly and I have to reset it.

That kind of issue should not happen this often in a package like Houdini.

Am I correct in assuming because there is no XPU on macos there is also no bake gsplat node?

Documentation Link [www.sidefx.com]