mark Posted June 15, 2004 Share Posted June 15, 2004 Hi all Im wondering how you all go about managing the objects in a scene. Is it just a matter of making many different scenes and compositing? This is something I don't do much of - but definitely should for aesthetic reasons if nothing else, i.e. render passes. buy a better computer isnt an option just yet but im thinking this problem must scale to very heavy scenes even on top hardware? i mean i doubt all of new york was one scene on one computer in spiderman... similarly, with a fairly complex model, different parts of it have different subdivision levels, either none, 1 or 2. it would be ideal to have a global subdiv ON/subdiv OFF toggle, so i can quickly drop/raise the scene poly count, rather than going through the network and turning on/off all the different subdiv OPS, which each take time to cook - generally that's a pain. maybe each object should have just a couple of subdiv OPS and pipe all geometry into a merge then into that one subdiv. it seems to make sense to keep the parts seperate and finally into a merge, but i could be wrong. any ideas appreciated! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
3__ Posted June 15, 2004 Share Posted June 15, 2004 you might be able to toggle the display flags between sops using a custom panel. -cpb Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jason Posted June 15, 2004 Share Posted June 15, 2004 I'd consider using a Houdini variable. $SUBDIV_LEVEL or something. You can easily also add aliases to increasing and decreasing this too. In the Textport: Director -> alias low set subdiv=0 Director -> alias med set subdiv=1 Director -> alias high set subdiv=2 Director -> med Director -> echo $subdiv 1 Director -> high Director -> echo $subdiv 2 Hope this helps, Jason Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
craiglhoffman Posted June 16, 2004 Share Posted June 16, 2004 No need to code anything- just add a custom variable in the Settings -> Aliases and Variables -> Variables window and it will be there whenever you open the scene. At the two blank areas at the bottom type in something like "SubDepth" and "1" (without the quotes). Now in all your Subdivide SOPs put $SubDepth in the "Depth" field. Now you can go to that Aliases and Variables window and change SubDepth to 0 for no effect or 2 or 3 or whatever and it will get changed everywhere at once. Doesn't everyone create their own variables like this?!? -Craig Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
renderpipe Posted June 16, 2004 Share Posted June 16, 2004 Doesn't everyone create their own variables like this?!? Thanks to you, now I will! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
doc Posted June 16, 2004 Share Posted June 16, 2004 Here's another thing you might consider. Start by saving the geometry in your scene as .bgeos. Now that you have written the geos out you can replace the objects in your scene with proxy/bounding objects. this should speed things up. Obviously you don't want to render the proxy geo so here's what you do: go to your Geomerty nodes and change the Geometry parmeter to "bounded file (render SOP defines bounds)" You'll notice that the parameter "Geometry File" parameter is now avaiable. point this parameter to the bgeo you saved to disk. When you render, it should render the geomerty you saved to file. In addition it will only load the geo into ram if it's in the camera frustum, and only for the bucket that's being rendered. All the Best Luca Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mark Posted June 16, 2004 Author Share Posted June 16, 2004 wow i didnt know any of this was even possible.. thanks all for your ideas i need to wait until i get home to test them but i am seriously impressed. houdini ROCKS (yeah yeah you know that already ) cheers will summarise it all into the wiki when i have it working! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
aracid Posted June 17, 2004 Share Posted June 17, 2004 hey doc that doesnt seem to work with prman, i dont suppose u know a solution like that for prman, cause thats an awesome way to handle geom ? thanks in advance aracid Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mark Posted June 13, 2005 Author Share Posted June 13, 2005 i dug this thread up and it seems i never replied to it. these are both elegant solutions, craig's just makes it a breeze. thanks to both! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
michael Posted June 13, 2005 Share Posted June 13, 2005 or just have two branched nulls at the bottom of your sop chains: | last SOP / \ null_01 subdivide \ null_02 where null_01 has the display flag and null_02 has the render flag that way you can view low res stuff in the viewport but when you render you'll get the subdivided geometry... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
deecue Posted June 13, 2005 Share Posted June 13, 2005 going along with jason's and craig's post way back, what i like to do is create aliases/variables and attach them to my F keys on the keyboard... just set your alias for "low" to F9 and "high" to F10 and that should be it. just switch between with a touch at the keyboard. i do this for toggling display flags on multiple obj groups as well. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mark Posted June 14, 2005 Author Share Posted June 14, 2005 hehe 2 more ways of doing it thats what i like to see. some wierd firefox bug only showed the first 4 posts in this thread so a bit of an unecessary bump but if it helps someone else with a houdini Eureka! moment like i just had thats good Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jason Posted June 14, 2005 Share Posted June 14, 2005 Absolutely My example is also meant to demonstrate some use for the "alias" command - you might need to set several variables to various values or run other commands. "Alias" can help you not have to remember all the settings for these. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sibarrick Posted June 14, 2005 Share Posted June 14, 2005 Don't forget you can also set the display to bounding box, or under display options under Optimisations -> Interactivity turn on interactive mode. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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