unload and hard-lock flags

[Alexey Vanzhula]

What is really usage of:
1. SOP Unload Flag
2. SOP Hard Lock Flag

Documentation doesn't helped

[fathom]

sop unload will tell the sop to free up its ram after it's done cooking (assuming it's not the currently displayed node).  it's useful to avoid memory bloat in otls where each additional sop is keeping full geo.

 

lock will force no more cooking for that node and retain the current geo.  it will also save that geo into your hip file, so be careful.

[Alexey Vanzhula]

sop unload will tell the sop to free up its ram after it's done cooking (assuming it's not the currently displayed node).  it's useful to avoid memory bloat in otls where each additional sop is keeping full geo.

 

I dont really understand what advantages unload flag gives to, for example, AttribVOP inside Wrangle SOP

 

lock will force no more cooking for that node and retain the current geo.  it will also save that geo into your hip file, so be careful.

 

I know how locking works but what is diffrence between soft locking and hard locking

Thanx!

 

[graham]

From HOM docs:

 

A hard-locked node stores its data inside the node, and no longer responds to parameter or input node changes.

 

A soft-locked node stores position delta information , preventing all but a small set of manual modeling changes from being made.

[Alexey Vanzhula]

From HOM docs:

 

A hard-locked node stores its data inside the node, and no longer responds to parameter or input node changes.

 

A soft-locked node stores position delta information , preventing all but a small set of manual modeling changes from being made.

I want to pack (subnet) many SOPs that changes geometry  a lot. What is best - soft or hard, because all the times when I scripting SOPs I using only soft locking.

Thanx!

Edited January 20, 2016 by Alexey Vanzhula

[fathom]

 

I dont really understand what advantages unload flag gives to, for example, AttribVOP inside Wrangle SOP

 

I know how locking works but what is diffrence between soft locking and hard locking

Thanx!

 

 

 

in the case of a single node in an otl, i'm not sure there's any advantage to unloading.  i believe the parent node (the wrangle) is just instancing the geo in the display'd node (the vop).  but if you had a chain of nodes that were not unloaded, each of them would contain a copy of the geo which could be a lot of extra ram used for no real benefit since it's unlikely in the case of an otl that you'd ever grab from one of the intermediate steps directly.

 

honestly, i've never heard of a soft/hard lock.  just a "lock" (which is a hard lock, presumably).

Edited January 20, 2016 by fathom

[Alexey Vanzhula]

in the case of a single node in an otl, i'm not sure there's any advantage to unloading.  i believe the parent node (the wrangle) is just instancing the geo in the display'd node (the vop).  but if you had a chain of nodes that were not unloaded, each of them would contain a copy of the geo which could be a lot of extra ram used for no real benefit since it's unlikely in the case of an otl that you'd ever grab from one of the intermediate steps directly.

 

honestly, i've never heard of a soft/hard lock.  just a "lock" (which is a hard lock, presumably).

Can you show simple otl example where unload flag is a good idea?

[fathom]

i can't name one off the top of my head.  the ram benefit is countered by the fact that an unloaded sop has to recook if you ask for its data, so a downstream change can have a major impact.

 

for example, let's say you have an otl that does some filtering on an sdf volume.  it expands the sdf, filters it, then shrinks it back down.  3 steps that could all be unloaded to prevent having extra copies of your data in ram.  the downside is that if you change the final step, you'll have to cook the first two since they've dropped their data already.  kind of a pain when you're working on things, but if you're pushing the ram limit, you might not have any other way to get things executed.