Jason

If you're rendering with Mantra, you might want to look into "checkpointing" -- which can help a partially rendered frame pick up from where it left off. https://www.sidefx.com/docs/houdini/props/mantra.html -- search for vm_writecheckpoint

Hi again! Definitely interesting as there are no doubt many UIs/Qt apps out there that try to help visualize git repos and perhaps you could take advantage of those. One important thing to keep in mind is that HDAs can be used for tools - low to high level operations, and also for "assets" - like rigs or even just static data inside HDA sections. The storage mechanism might be the same, but usually tools are released like code and thus managed by pipeline, and assets versions are managed by artist, often delivered by an asset management system. Perhaps you're considering this solely for tool delivery? As mentioned on chat, but this would be interesting to see if you can find a way to accommodate merging changes. All the systems I've used have to employ locks to avoid conflicts, or insist you branch or something. In a multi-user environment, conflicts could be rather frequent. Also, perhaps you could consider evaluating whether a git flow workflow would be appropriate for HDAs - or if it's just overkill.

They're on the same page, I think -- did you see this:

Hi, Try a very new build -- there were some updates to Windows which caused some issues with TBB and such. I saw this come and go on the SideFX forum. Try the Daily Build.

Also, when you printf() in VEX, you're forcing output to happen. VEX is usually very good at detecting uniform vs varying variables and executing thing the minimum number of times. However, there are some specific optimizations you can use -- check out texprintf().

Congratulations, SideFX -- and a priceless still frame! Best of luck for the future and keep innovating!

Oh you want to do this directly in the viewport? I was hoping Render COP pointing to a OpenGL ROP would let you grab the viewport, or failing that some kind of python function to yank the GeometryViewport and then do your thresholding and use that to scatter colored points on the viewing plane - your sprites. Sadly the very first step doesn't support opengl rendering directly into COPs, and I can't find an appropriate python function. What speeds are you looking at wanting? Realtime? If so you might be in HDK Viewport Render Hook territory.

Isn't that cool?!!

Looks interesting; I'll give it a try. Thanks for sharing, Jason

hou.hda.installFile() http://www.sidefx.com/docs/houdini/hom/hou/hda.html

Or get to know the Point Replicate SOP!

That's a new one on me

Hi, Good luck with your toolset! I've written a RAT converters a few times over the years, and I'll make just one suggestion -- using the multiprocessing module and perform 5-10 conversions simultaneously in a multiprocessing pool. Super easy to add and improves the turnaround time immensely.

I would imagine this is not very applicable to VEX, really because it's executed in SIMD fashion -- ie. Single Instruction Multiple Data -- which basically means that data isn't laid out in single data units as it appears in the code, but instead are each large uniform arrays in memory, loaded with data from the entities it's processing (eg. points, prims, etc). These arrays are dense and chewed through in a processor-pipeline-friendly fashion. If you look at the runVex() HOM command you can see how you need to provide arrays of data.

This is definitely a masterful release - bringing lots of great new functionality. Thanks, SideFX!