Swapniel16 Posted October 24, 2014 Share Posted October 24, 2014 Hello, I am using Houdini 12.5, and doing some pyro simulations. Earlier the speed was fine. But recently Houdini is using only 2 GB of RAM while I have 16 GB installed.This makes the simulation tremendously slow, even playing on timeline with a division size of 3 takes several minutes to calculate. I searched for the appropriate reasons, but none of them solved the issue. Can anyone please tell me what must be the issue?? Thank you. -Swapniel.M Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SreckoM Posted October 24, 2014 Share Posted October 24, 2014 Houdini is using how much it needs... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Swapniel16 Posted October 24, 2014 Author Share Posted October 24, 2014 Taking 10 mins/frames. That too not a bigger scale, neither complex sim. Just emitting from particles. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Swapniel16 Posted October 24, 2014 Author Share Posted October 24, 2014 Earlier the sim was pretty fast. Now it is taking a lot of time. I haven't tweaked it much. I don't know if its only the RAM issue. But yes the RAM utilized is below 2GB. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Whatsinaname Posted October 24, 2014 Share Posted October 24, 2014 As stated above, your sim doesn't need more than the RAM it uses. Check if you didn't accidentally change a crucial parameter that is responsible for your simulation being slow, which can happen easily when working with Pyro. There's also a slight chance some capital letters on your machine might have eaten up the RAM as they are sooo huge. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Swapniel16 Posted October 24, 2014 Author Share Posted October 24, 2014 @Phlok: Thanks for the reply. I checked that other sims are pretty fast which are heavier than this one. I don't know which parameter led to the slow simulation. I'll try to find that. But how can capital letters eat up my RAM. I'm sorry but I didn't get this one. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sierra62 Posted October 24, 2014 Share Posted October 24, 2014 turn on the performance monitor, it should show you where your bottleneck is. You may have an old node in there that isn't multi-threaded yet causing a problem. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Swapniel16 Posted October 24, 2014 Author Share Posted October 24, 2014 First I will have to check how performance monitor works. But it is highlighting "adjust" volume under "create_fuel_volume1" and giving a red bar in front of it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sierra62 Posted October 24, 2014 Share Posted October 24, 2014 can you share a file? It would make it much easier to see what the issues are. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Swapniel16 Posted October 24, 2014 Author Share Posted October 24, 2014 (edited) explosion_003_Particles.hipncYeah sure.. Here is the file. Edited October 25, 2014 by Swapniel16 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sierra62 Posted October 24, 2014 Share Posted October 24, 2014 having a quick look at your scene your problem is with the division size on your fluid source node. With such large spheres moving out at that speed will slow down your cook time. try using smaller spheres as your source, and you can always write out your fluid source node before reading it into dops and it won't slow down your sim. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Swapniel16 Posted October 25, 2014 Author Share Posted October 25, 2014 Yes indeed my spheres were big. And reducing them have enhanced the speed a bit. Thanks for this one. But if Houdini is taking so much time to cook, why doesn't it use the available RAM and CPU. Here only 2-3 GB RAM is getting used, and on the other hand, Houdini hangs. I don't get the point of not using the available power and getting hang by itself. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest tar Posted October 25, 2014 Share Posted October 25, 2014 there seem to be a general misconception I've heard around that 'using all Ram' equates to being faster and better. It's the opposite in reality - using less Ram is much more efficient. More Ram usage means more data to move between the CPU and Ram sticks, which is slower, and also more Ram usage means more data for the Cpu to process, which is slower. In regards to using more of the Cpu cores, that depends on how the algorithms can be split between the various processes in the CPU. This doesn't happen automatically and has to be programmed to work. e.g. if your algorithm is running across 6 cores the data may have to arrive in completion in the correct order to be useful. More complex process like simulations require more work to make it multi-threadable. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Swapniel16 Posted October 25, 2014 Author Share Posted October 25, 2014 there seem to be a general misconception I've heard around that 'using all Ram' equates to being faster and better. It's the opposite in reality - using less Ram is much more efficient. More Ram usage means more data to move between the CPU and Ram sticks, which is slower, and also more Ram usage means more data for the Cpu to process, which is slower. In regards to using more of the Cpu cores, that depends on how the algorithms can be split between the various processes in the CPU. This doesn't happen automatically and has to be programmed to work. e.g. if your algorithm is running across 6 cores the data may have to arrive in completion in the correct order to be useful. More complex process like simulations require more work to make it multi-threadable. Sir, I have understood your point which was very straight forward. I don't have much knowledge of how background process works when a simulation is in process. Since I'm more into simulations, Can you please share more of your knowledge on how to efficiently use the available CPU,RAM,etc and get the better results in a relatively less time. Because, many times it happens that even to render flipbook of a not much denser simulation(lowres), either the software hangs, or disc space gets low, or some other memory issues. Then it gets impossible to get the desired results. Since I love Houdini, I would like to learn more about this software. I'm sorry if I sound kiddish, may be because of my little experience. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest tar Posted October 25, 2014 Share Posted October 25, 2014 Not totally sure there is a fire and forget solution to speeding things up - I would start by running tests. begin with a 10x10x10 volume area with only a few divisions, then test with more or less divisions, etc. An iterative trial and error approach is a solution. Also I would learn more about computer architecture, the way a computer works for shifting and processing data - you will then be able to run it more efficiently - this is critical if you want to be a professional cgi artist. Probably very helpful to check out online computer science courses. Everything slots into place then Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Swapniel16 Posted October 25, 2014 Author Share Posted October 25, 2014 Not totally sure there is a fire and forget solution to speeding things up - I would start by running tests. begin with a 10x10x10 volume area with only a few divisions, then test with more or less divisions, etc. An iterative trial and error approach is a solution. Also I would learn more about computer architecture, the way a computer works for shifting and processing data - you will then be able to run it more efficiently - this is critical if you want to be a professional cgi artist. Probably very helpful to check out online computer science courses. Everything slots into place then I got it. Thanks Marty. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
XRM Posted October 26, 2014 Share Posted October 26, 2014 As stated above, your sim doesn't need more than the RAM it uses. Check if you didn't accidentally change a crucial parameter that is responsible for your simulation being slow, which can happen easily when working with Pyro. There's also a slight chance some capital letters on your machine might have eaten up the RAM as they are sooo huge. Liked your post for the last line Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Swapniel16 Posted October 26, 2014 Author Share Posted October 26, 2014 Hello, I would like to bring into notice(for beginners like me) some points which I came to know after SreckoM, Phlok, Sierra62 and marty replied to me on this thread. Surely my machine was not at fault,neither was the software. It was the emitter and specifically the division size. At this speed, and with my less division size, the voxel count went to 11 millions within 4-5 frames, which is really insane and indirectly forcing my machine to say -"Hey! I'm not going to calculate that. " . So emitter need not be high detailed every time. Thank you all for replying. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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