Mantra Renderer Slow and Using 100% CPU Constantly

[Nightwave]

I have a (hopefully) quick question about the Mantra Renderer. Here's my predicament:

I cooked a pyro simulation with a .1 division size (took only like 5 minutes). When I went to render a frame of the simulation, the Mplay window didn't appear for about 5 minutes and after the render stopped, it was still using 100% of my cpu power. If I killed Houdini before the Mplay window appeared, the mantra process still using 100% cpu power and won't stop unless I kill it.

I tried the same file on another computer, same issue. I tried doing another pyro simulation in a new file, same issue. I also installed a daily build of Houdini hoping it was just a bug. None of it worked. I can't seem to narrow down what is going wrong.

Any ideas? It would be much appreciated.

Thanks!

[rafaelfs]

Try posting your file so people can dissect it.

Also there's a lot of posts on mantra and pyro in this forum and Sidefx's, as well as training material on mantra that you'd benefit from taking a look at.

Cheers

[mightcouldb1]

What render engine are you using?

[foam]

sounds like maybe the pyro sim is cooking each frame, are you sure you're only rendering the cache?

[DanBode]

If I killed Houdini before the Mplay window appeared, the mantra process still using 100% cpu power and won't stop unless I kill it.

I'm not sure what's causing your issues but it's worth noting that mantra and Houdini run as two separate processes so killing Houdini won't stop a Mantra render that's already begun. (unless you catch it while Houdini is still frozen up and generating the ifd). You can however easily track, pause and kill mantra renders in the Render Scheduler pane. Which is super helpful.