Dani Londono
daniLon
About Me
Connect
LOCATION
Not Specified
WEBSITE
Houdini Skills
Availability
Not Specified
Recent Forum Posts
Looking for Tips: Efficient Caching with Crowd Foot Locking Oct. 24, 2025, 4:18 p.m.
Hi everyone,
I’m running into an issue with some crowds and hoping someone can help. I’ve set up agents using an FBX for the agent itself and loading additional FBXs as clips. So far everything works. I’ve saved out the agent definition caches and I’m loading them into the shot where I’m setting up the crowds.
The problem starts when I try to cache the crowds. I’ve narrowed it down to the foot locking setup (Agent Prep / Additional Channels from CHOPs). Without foot locking, my agents cache very quickly and I can play back the cache in real time. I assume the cache is referencing the agent definitions on disk instead of reloading them every frame, which is great.
However, because I need the agents to have terrain adaptation, I’ve added an Agent Prep after bringing in the agent (still referencing the agent definition directory). This gives me the terrain adaptation I need, but this is also where the caching slows down A LOT and the cache size increases drastically. It also becomes extremely slow to play back.
In a test with just a single agent, my cache went from around 40 MB (without foot locking) to over 50 GB (with foot locking) for the same frame range.
Does anyone have any insight on how to properly set this up? Can the foot locking data be saved as part of the agent definition? I’ve tried both “Cache Modified Clips to Disk” on the Agent Prep and setting the source to “File,” but no luck
the agent still can’t find those channels.
I’m referencing this documentation for tips, but haven’t found anything specific to this issue: https://www.sidefx.com/docs/houdini/crowds/caches.html [www.sidefx.com]
Any help would be greatly appreciated!
I’m running into an issue with some crowds and hoping someone can help. I’ve set up agents using an FBX for the agent itself and loading additional FBXs as clips. So far everything works. I’ve saved out the agent definition caches and I’m loading them into the shot where I’m setting up the crowds.
The problem starts when I try to cache the crowds. I’ve narrowed it down to the foot locking setup (Agent Prep / Additional Channels from CHOPs). Without foot locking, my agents cache very quickly and I can play back the cache in real time. I assume the cache is referencing the agent definitions on disk instead of reloading them every frame, which is great.
However, because I need the agents to have terrain adaptation, I’ve added an Agent Prep after bringing in the agent (still referencing the agent definition directory). This gives me the terrain adaptation I need, but this is also where the caching slows down A LOT and the cache size increases drastically. It also becomes extremely slow to play back.
In a test with just a single agent, my cache went from around 40 MB (without foot locking) to over 50 GB (with foot locking) for the same frame range.
Does anyone have any insight on how to properly set this up? Can the foot locking data be saved as part of the agent definition? I’ve tried both “Cache Modified Clips to Disk” on the Agent Prep and setting the source to “File,” but no luck
the agent still can’t find those channels.I’m referencing this documentation for tips, but haven’t found anything specific to this issue: https://www.sidefx.com/docs/houdini/crowds/caches.html [www.sidefx.com]
Any help would be greatly appreciated!
Set multiple Agent clip properties at once based on name Oct. 20, 2025, 7:04 p.m.
Hi,
I have some crowd agents that have a LOT of clips in their clip catalog, I need to set agent clip properties for all the nonlooping cycles to disable "Enable Looping". Is there a way that I can do this based on clip name? fFor instance all my nonlooping clips have "_nonloop" in their name. I tried using a wildcard in the clipname parameter but that doesn't seem to work. Adding each clip one by one and disabling the checkbox seems like a tedious approach, wondering if someone knows a smarter/more efficient way of doing this. Thank you!!
I have some crowd agents that have a LOT of clips in their clip catalog, I need to set agent clip properties for all the nonlooping cycles to disable "Enable Looping". Is there a way that I can do this based on clip name? fFor instance all my nonlooping clips have "_nonloop" in their name. I tried using a wildcard in the clipname parameter but that doesn't seem to work. Adding each clip one by one and disabling the checkbox seems like a tedious approach, wondering if someone knows a smarter/more efficient way of doing this. Thank you!!
Vellum - timescale and constraint behavior Nov. 19, 2024, 1:04 p.m.
James, I'm not sure if you meant vellum substeps or DOP substeps, but I'm having luck with increasing the global DOP substeps by the same amount as the slow down, keeping the vellum solver substeps the same.