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On Windows, you can examine disk activity by checking Task Manager or using Resource Monitor. For more advanced, real-time monitoring, Microsoft provides the Process Monitor tool, a utility for IT professionals. 

When you start a simulation or a render in Houdini, does the program need, during the simulation, to access the program drive where Houdini is installed? Why am I asking the question? if Houdini rarely reads from the installation files during the simulation or render then I don't mind installing houdini in the slower SSD, and leave the faster M.2 drive for the caches.

From what I understand: If you dive into the FLIP solver's Surface Tension feature, you'll find that the key parameter is the scale of curvature. The solver is based on the Navier-Stokes equations. It uses divergence to measure whether particle flow is shrinking or expanding, and then applies pressure to push or pull the fluid, ensuring incompressibility. With surface tension enabled, the solver applies surface pressure based on curvature. This pressure is summed and submitted during the pressure update step (FLIP solve), which then influences particle motion. In FLIP, the surface tension force is defined as: Code F = scale_ST × mean_curvature × surface_normal Where: F is the force density from surface tension FLIP Surface Tension parameter: scale_ST is the surface tension coefficient, typically based on particle separation or voxel size mean_curvature represents how much the surface is expanding, greater expansion leads to higher curvature magnitude surface_normal indicates the direction of the shrinking flow Here’s the link to the article I wrote, which includes a full default HIP file download with extra (paid) solution. It explains in detail why the method works (rock solid), how to use it, and offers various techniques to help you solve problems across different cases. https://medium.com/@vupham_37726/houdini-flip-surface-tension-demystified-f1239da880ce For more background, you might want to check out the paper “Continuum Surface Force Method.” It's important to note that the standard Navier–Stokes equations do not account for surface tension directly, they only solve for inertia, pressure, and viscosity. The Continuum Surface Force model is a technique used in computer graphics (CG) to inject surface tension behavior into fluid simulations. It’s designed for visual realism in animation, not for physically accurate modeling of real-world water materials. The blur radius feature acts as a smoothing filter to reduce volume noise and jitter. It uses a kernel radius to apply the blur. Increasing the blur radius reduces precision, which in turn diminishes fine details such as tendrils and thin films. The higher the scale ST, the stronger the surface tension pushes inward. Small droplets quickly transform into bulk spheres, and tendrils disappear faster. Reducing the scale ST makes films and tendrils harder to hold, causing them to scatter more quickly into floating dots. Maybe someone else could help make it easier to understand from an art direction or VFX perspective, rather than just explaining the dry technical details of the solver. One-day dev for this article and sample files, fueled by years of grind and the smart Houdini gang before me. I'm leaving it here for future reader.

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untitled.hip or just dissolve the edges you dont need directly