Fluid sim test - 24hrs / 240 frames?!

[chazfest]

Hi,

I'm fairly new to Houdini and have started experimenting with fluids recently. They've blown me away! I cannot believe how beautiful and realistic they look with minimal time spent from a beginner like myself

One question, I've added a 'Source From Volume' asset to a blank stage, I've then added 3 glass panes (left, right, rear) to simulate the 'box' containing the water. Last but not least, I've added the all essential camera with a simple bottom left to top right translation/rotation movement (fairly minimal), and 2 lights. It looks amazing, I'm over the moon with the render preview pane upon mid collision!

Here's the issue though, it's taken over 6 hours to render the first 32 frames so far! And if it continues at this rate, it's gonna take around 24 hours to render the full 240 frames!

As I'm currently running the free version of Apprentice, I'm only rendering the scene out at 640x480! If this is normal, I am not looking forward to rendering out a full HD scene with fluids when I buy Apprentice HD at the end of the year

I'm rendering it out on a 2.6ghz quad core Nahalem mac pro with 7gb ram. Not a blazing machine by any means, it's around 3/4 years old

All fun and games, loving this app. Aside from the jaw dropping results, I'm finding the interface really intuitive so far, can't wait to delve deeper!

Thanks in advance.

Chaz

[michael]

are these simulation times or render times?

you might want to post a file and we can have a look...

[chazfest]

are these simulation times or render times?

you might want to post a file and we can have a look...

Render times. I've left the machine rendering overnight at work. I'll post the .hip file tomorrow for inspection

Thanks for the response.

[chazfest]

Render times. I've left the machine rendering overnight at work. I'll post the .hip file tomorrow for inspection

Thanks for the response.

Ok, so here's the hip file in question.

One more thing, upon viewing the first 83 frames of the render (attached), it's apparent that the fluid hasn't reacted as I'd thought it would do with the ground. It's disappearing in parts. Could this be because I didn't position the grid correctly? ie. The grid is actually slightly above the bottom of the container?

Thanks in advance, I'm scratching my head at this one

SplishBox.hipnc

SplishSplash Box 83frames.mov

[bunker]

first of all, don't render for the IP. If mplay crashes at 99% of your render,

you will lose everything. save your sequence on disk as TIF or EXR instead.

Get rid of the "fluid_interior" object, there is a fog volume material attached to it (!) why ?

in your Mantra output render : in Shading, set you "Reflect limit" and "Refract limit" much lower ( try 1 to 3 )

You have 3 light with raytraced shadows on, you should try depth map shadow for your lights instead

remove displacement from your glass shader ...

I fixed the problems above, have a look there :

SplishBox2.hipnc

[chazfest]

Bunker, I cannot thank you enough!

Some of the things you mentioned I'm not 100% clear on, but will research and follow/avoid as advised.

Got a test render running now, already running much faster.

Thanks so much, loving the Houdini community