Chungz Posted May 26, 2015 Share Posted May 26, 2015 Hi, I am new to houdini and still picking up some basic skill. So I might throw out some very silly or basic question. I am using flipbook to do a preview of my flip simulation which is already being cached out. Each frame takes me around 2gb. When I reimport the cache into my scene, even I have disable simulation, randomly select 1 frame takes me about 1-3 minutes to display my flip particles. It take about 4 hours to make a flipbook preview of 150frames. I wonder is that normal? Any suggestion that I might able to make a quicker preview, or nodes that I can reduce my particles count just for preview purposes? Thank you. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pbarua Posted May 26, 2015 Share Posted May 26, 2015 It will take same time or even more if you reduce particle count because it will load all the points from disk then reduce them. So reducing those will take extra cooking time. You can use OpenGL ROP to destribute flipbook if you have more machines available. Or you can render points if you have render farm. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chungz Posted May 26, 2015 Author Share Posted May 26, 2015 Thanks pbarua for your suggestion. However I have just a single machine to work on. So I assume that it's normal. As I recently added one extra hard drive to store my cache, I wonder is the hard drive causes the slow or it's normal for houdini to load in heavy cache files. Also I wanted to ask this ask well. During my process of caching out simulation to bgeo files, sometimes the cache bar show it cached till eg. frame 90, but in my directory it delay for few frames and slowly update. So sometime the cache process stay at the last frame for a while until the cache file updated in directory. Any ideas? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
boby Posted May 26, 2015 Share Posted May 26, 2015 (edited) Hi Chungz, You can boost your loading performance by using a RAID system with multiple HD. Another way to do quick preview is to not load/render each frame. Edit: for your last question, it's probably time for writing bgeo on your HD. You can resync simulation/writing by unchecking "save in background" option, but your simulation time will be huge as H has to write cache before continuing sim for each frame. Edited May 26, 2015 by boby Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chungz Posted May 26, 2015 Author Share Posted May 26, 2015 Hi boby, Thanks for reply. I heard about this RAID system before but I don't think if I know how to do it exactly. There was once I cleaned my whole hard drive for some own customization and I am kinda afraid to touch that part anymore. About the quick previous on not loading/rendering each frame, do I have to type something on the flipbook setting? First time heard this though. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chungz Posted May 26, 2015 Author Share Posted May 26, 2015 Hi boby, regarding your suggestion on the "save in background", actually I didn't check that on as well. I just simply hit render button. I wasn't able to work anything on H while having my cache in progress. Just that it seem to be delay. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
boby Posted May 26, 2015 Share Posted May 26, 2015 (edited) Yep for example! On your flipbook icon, just RMB > settings. On your frame range, in the third parm ("inc"), you have your render step frame. For example, rendering 1f/4 give : $RFSTART $RFEND 4 boby Edit: for your last question, save in background is checked by default on your Rop Output node. You should let it check or sim time ll increase dramatically Edited May 26, 2015 by boby Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chungz Posted May 26, 2015 Author Share Posted May 26, 2015 Hi boby, Thanks for the information. Oh ya the step size of creating flipbook preview. I so get used to ignore that column. I shall take a look on it. Regarding the RAID drive, I just checked out some information on that. People usually just RAID their hard drive before they install their OS. I just get another hard drive for cache storage. If I do the RAID now will the data on both of my hard drive gone? Just wondering that is my second hard drive slowing down most of the performance. Ran a hard drive speed test and found out that my primary drive was at 25 -30 mbps rate and my storage drive got a 140mbps. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
boby Posted May 26, 2015 Share Posted May 26, 2015 Just use the faster Building a RAID with only 2 HD is not worth it. Best approach here is to render inc frame, except you have money and time to build it! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chungz Posted May 26, 2015 Author Share Posted May 26, 2015 nah, I actually adding second hard drive just for storage. It's actually a 3TBs secondary hard drive. Just that I personally feel the computer started begin to slow down a little bit. So I wonder that the cache delay problem is done by this issue. Well I just read another article regarding RAID 0 about it storing format, I think I will just stay in my current partition will do as I don't wan my data gone if either one hard drive giving out problems. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.