CopySOP packed prims VS point instance procedural

[TomRaynor]

I have lets say 50 points onto which a bit of "packed" geometry is being copied using the copy sop and copy stamping.

 

Now that we have packed primitives at our disposal in h13 and that they work with the copy sop, is there any need (or gain) for me to instead use point instance procedural methods where I can specify as an attribute on the points, what geometry to use at render time as opposed to just having the geometry in my viewport in the form of packed primitives copied using a copysop?

 

Hope that makes sense...

 

Thanks!

[slamfunk]

 

 

Before Houdini 13, the most efficient rendering workflow was to work interactively with proxy geometry in Houdini, and replace the geometry at render time using a geometry shader such as the Delayed Load Procedural or point instancing. Houdini 13 added support for packed primitives and deep integration of the Alembic file format. These features let you work with very large geometry directly, and easily share files between departments.

 

According to SESI... http://www.sidefx.com/docs/houdini13.0/render/tips

[slamfunk]

Some good info on packed primitives here too... http://www.sidefx.com/index.php?option=com_forum&Itemid=172&page=viewtopic&t=30134&sid=5bc3852085c989c506218238701b0866

[crunch]

I have lets say 50 points onto which a bit of "packed" geometry is being copied using the copy sop and copy stamping.

 

Now that we have packed primitives at our disposal in h13 and that they work with the copy sop, is there any need (or gain) for me to instead use point instance procedural methods where I can specify as an attribute on the points, what geometry to use at render time as opposed to just having the geometry in my viewport in the form of packed primitives copied using a copysop?

 

Hope that makes sense...

 

Thanks!

Personally, I use packed primitives.

 

You can use packed disk primitives (with the file SOP) or use object merge to get the "instance" geometry.  Or just use other SOPs.

 

I think it makes it a lot easier to deal with motion blur, animating geometry on instances, etc.  It's also easier to set up.

[TomRaynor]

Cool, good to know. Cheers for the info guys.

[TomRaynor]

And is it possible to assign different materials to the contents of a packed object using groups?

I tried applying two different materials using groups before packing the object and then packing it up. It seemed that the material assignments dropped upon packing.

What is confusing me slightly is that on the "packed edit" SOP, there is a "material" tab where it almost looks like you can assign different materials to the contents of a packed object based on a "packed name".

 

Does anyone know how to do this. I haven't yet got it working.

 

Thanks.

[anim]

here is some info on that matter:

http://www.sidefx.com/index.php?option=com_forum&Itemid=172&page=viewtopic&t=30631

[TomRaynor]

Great info! Thanks.