reducing loading times of big scene files

[MENOZ]

Hello,

I was wondering if it is possible to tell houdini to avoid open part of the hipfile.

 

it often happens that a scene contains multiple version and old part of setup  and work in progress, and it´s easier to keep it there in the network view somewhere.

it's easier than having multiple scene files or making a DA because it is "contextualised" in the scene file and is easier to find and see what´s their use in scene.

 

keeping the scene clean surely helps, but sometimes you might want to have multiple copies of a big setup and the number of nodes to load or to save  increases and there´s not much you can do.

 

The idea is having a way to mark a subnet to not load the nodes inside when opening the scene file. and if you want you can load the contents in a second moment.

 

 

I don´t think it is possible out of the box. What do you think?

I know houdini scene file is pretty much like a file system, so I thought that maybe this should be somehow possible.

[Maurits]

If the sub network is on the first level of Geo just unchecked the blue button on the node and it should not be cooked.

If it's on a lower level so inside a geo node or any other type make sure the sub network is not linked to any node that feeds into the nodes you are using for the final result. I think node's are only cooked if the result is used be nodes later in the process.

[acey195]

Actually, maybe Menoz ment the actual loading of the file, and I would be interested in this as well.

Once you get truly massive networks just loading the hip file (or placing the OTL) can take more than a few minutes. (Prior to even cooking)

 

There are already some ways to optimize OTLs for loading, such as avoiding SOPs with loads of subnodes (especially the default color node)

but if there are more ways, we could all benefit from that I think.

[michael]

houdini -n will open Houdini in Manual Cook mode

[MENOZ]

Hello,

acey195 got exactly the idea.

I'm not talking about cooking the operators when loading the file, I want to reduce the loading time of the hipfile itself, not just avoid to cook.

For example, if you have lots of materials in a scene, the hipfile just take long time to load. I´ve used the material as an example because is not something that cook when you open the hipfile, just to make it obvious.

Another example of something that often happens:

you have a setup, with prep, source, simulation, post sim nodes.

you need to redo the sim for another source, and this might lend you to change more steps on the setup.

Usually you just duplicate all the nodes, so to have a backup of your previus setup for example, and keep working from there.

If you to this a bunch of times and the setup is pretty complex you end up waiting for 15 minutes or more just to open the file, not cooking anything.

But you know that you only need to work only on the last copy of the setup you made, and you´re not interested in loading all the rest.

Splitting your setup in different scene files in some production environments is not as easy to do and to keep track (unfortunately), and you really never know beforehand how your setup will look like, and how to separate your work in progress.

I think having the ability to decide to exclude from loading some subnets for example, could help.

Edited December 16, 2015 by MENOZ

[foam]

Compiling shaders helps a lot.

[MENOZ]

example file:

this fills up around 5 GB when loaded in houdini. It's not super bad, sometimes production scenes can go far beyond this. but this is what I can do for now, just try to duplicate the subnet many times.

 

if I could exclude from loading some subnets so that it would take much less memory and load quicker would be amazing.

 

I don't know how to explain better than this.

 

thank you!

heavyFile.hip

Edited December 17, 2015 by MENOZ