Milan Kolar

I've given up on houdini and quicktime a long time ago. Right now we're using a custom made flipbook OUT rop which uses ffmpeg to export quicktimes.

It's based on Platon Filimonov flipbook rop that he posted somewhere on the forums (or I found it here as well https://owlfx.wordpress.com/2011/03/25/flipbook-rop/), [owlfx.wordpress.com] but I've extended it to make video output with optional audio. It does however require ffmpeg to be in system path for it to work.

I'll clean the .otl of some custom production rubbish I have there and post it for others to use when I get to work on Monday.

I'm running into a peculiar issue with my shader otls. I'll try to explain on an example.

I create a simple shader starting from surface model in the material pallete. I dig in, add a bunch of nodes, export parameters and end up with simplified version of mantra surface. Now I need to make HDA from this so I right click on it > ‘Create digital Asset’ and save it. All the otls we use live on central network location and we use combination of HSITE and otl scan path, to load it all in. That all works fine, however the I'm noticing incredible slowdowns in the viewport when I apply this shader from network located otl. When I stick the otl on local drive everything is fast and I get >120fps, when using identical otl from network it drops to around 12-20fps.

The strangest thing I find though is, that this doesn't happen if I first wrap the shader in subnet and then convert this subnet into HDA. Loading such otl from network doesn't slow down and stays above 120fps.

So the question is. Am I doing something wrong? I assumed that converting shaders into HDA directly instead of wrapping it in subnet would be preferred. Also when I apply ‘subnet shader’ to an object, it seems to ignore any OGL settings and only display plain the basic ogl shading in the viewport.

I've attached simple example scenario file. Just convert both shaders into otl saved on the network drive and try applying.

Any pointers about this would be greatly appreciated. It's simple to work around it by applying shaders from within the subnet, but it is certailny undesirable behaviour.

Cheers

Milan

Hey guys.

I'm running into similar issues as discussed here.

I'm using batch script to setup environment for people based on the project they are working on. The idea is that houdini should always pick up the default studio otls location (which holds all not project specific otls), plus a project specific otl folder, so I don't overpopulate their menus with assets they don't need. Studio OTLs are being loaded using HSITE and that works like a charm. However I can't get houdini to load any extra folders. I don't want to be using houdini.env, because I'd like to avoid doing any changes to local houdini installs.

This is the .bat script I'm using to set simple environment


set HSITE=K:\Studio\OTL\Path
set PYTHONPATH=%PYTHONPATH%;K:\Paths\to\custom\libraries
“C:\Program Files\Side Effects Software\Houdini 13.0.476\bin\houdinifx.exe” -s Technical


I was hoping to just add project specific folder somewhere, but I've tried countless combinations of variables, and nothing seems to pick it up correctly.

In short: I need to use LocationStudio/OTLS as HSITE + LocationProject/OTLS as extra otl libraries

Any ideas on how to get to this point?

Cheers