malexander

They're available online: https://www.sidefx.com/docs/

The code itself is likely limiting the number of threads adaptively so it doesn't completely tank performance. Most threaded code processes data in chunks. The chunk size might be quite small when divided by 32, so it reduces the number of threads to keep it larger. There's a non-trivial overhead for spawning and waiting on threads, and if you don't give a thread enough to do this starts dominating the cores as all you're doing is thread management. Plus there's usually some single-threaded code in between threaded code which can affect the %cpu reported, as it's averaged over the monitored interval.

If you're using HOM, grab the SceneViewer object from the desktop and iterate through the GeometryViewport's (SceneViewer.viewports()) and check the type() against hou.geometryViewportType.Top. When you find it, use changeType(hou.geometryViewportyType.Perspective) on that viewport object.

The RAT file format specifies that all color values stored in it are in linear space, so rendering to them will write the values as-is (no sRGB conversion). Rendering to a PNG, on the other hand, will convert the rendered linear color values to sRGB because it's a sRGB format. If you're writing a normal map to PNG, you do not want any colorspace conversion to take place on export or import - the value should be stored linearly (otherwise normal values are unevenly distributed across[-1,1]). So if you are reading the RAT into COPs, extracting the normals into a separate plane and writing them to PNG, disable the "Convert to Image Format's Colorspace" toggle in the Composite tab of the Composite ROP. This will write the linear values into the PNG as-is, without sRGB encoding.

useDefaultCamera and setCamera must be called on a GeometryViewport object. You have one in your script, 'viewport'. You can stash the default camera to a python object using: prev_view = viewport.defaultCamera().stash() // set your camera and flipbook viewport.setDefaultCamera(prev_view)

In your BIOS/EFI, look for a setting called "Core Performance Boost" and set it to Disabled. A lot of motherboards have this Enabled or set to Auto, which causes a lot of instability with some systems.

You could try GeometryViewport.draw(), but it's quite possible the redraw request won't be processed until the end of your script.

You don't need the op: prefix. That is only required if the parameter expects to a filename.

Space+Z (set pivot and frame)? Zoom is Ctrl+Alt+LMB drag to box zoom (also in the view state, but hard to do while holding Space).

I'm guessing you're referring to our viewport renderer and not Pixar's Storm (formally known as HydraGL). DOF and motion blur are available through the flipbook currently. However this isn't a way to hook up realtime reflections in LOPs the way you can in objects. Python presets are doable with HOM right now (FlipbookSettings), but I agree it should be more built-in. At least you can save them as default now

The rotospline cop allows you to draw arbitrary spline or polygon shapes. The shape cop can give you more precise shapes like rectangles. You can pipe that into the mask input of an over cop (or add, multiply, etc) to control which area of the image is affected.

A blank Python Panel's pane content can be shrunk almost completely, and if you hide the pane tabs they can get pretty small (but for the stowbars). But I don't think there's a way to get rid of the stowbars.

For those that don't want to completely customize their UI, you can use the Pane menu to move the file, shelf, status, and playbar to any pane (little v button to the right of the pane tabs, "Pane Interface > Move XXX here".

Yes, you can turn on "Object names" (or Object paths if you really like information overload) in the Guide tab of the viewport Display Options.

Yes, it's now showing you the geometry inside the object in local space, ie, not considering the object transform. There's an RFE to separate out the "hide" and "ignore object transform" parts of this mode into two separate options.