Selectively load volume from VDB file

[Juraj]

Hello,
now when I am loading VDB volumes with File SOP it sometime takes some time, especially with big volumes stored on network. I was wondering whether it is possible to load only specified volumes from a VDB file, for example to load only heat, to keep loading times slower. This would save a lot of time in situations where I am blasting all other volumes which I do not need directly after File node.

I quickly checked docs and found that it is possible to firstly read the header to find out information about stored VDBs and then to load needed volume (in Reading and modifying a grid section).

Any ideas if it is supported right now in Houdini implementation / or if there are any plans to add this?

Juraj

[Juraj]

So, I just found out, that OpenVDB's Houdini implementation has a node for exactly this purpose

From node's docs:

Quote

...This node reads VDB volumes from a `.vdb` file.
It is usually preferable to use Houdini's native File SOP node,
however unlike the native node, this node allows one to take advantage of
delayed loading, meaning that only those portions of a volume that are
actually accessed in a scene get loaded into memory.
Delayed loading can significantly reduce memory usage when working
with large volumes (but note that viewport visualization of a volume
usually requires the entire volume to be loaded into memory)...