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Mantra Initialization Pause (RESOLVED)


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Hey all, 

I have a general question about Mantra.  I am currently trying to build some simple procedural shaders using mantra.  Something that is a bit frustrating is the delayed load time.  Essentially my scene is freezing for 1-2 seconds everytime I make a change to a parameter on the Mat level.  Is this just something I need to get used to?  Or are there ways make the shader to compile faster.  The actual speed of mantra is not a problem at all, but this compile delay is making look dev a bit of a slow process.  I have tried increasing and reducing the number of threads, reducing the pixel samples below the default, etc.  

  My scene at the moment is incredibly basic, it has no lights, and a simple material shader with a noise controlling its color- not even a displacement being applied at this point.  

 

Any tips would be helpful!

Thank you!

Edited by Justin K
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are your parameters promoted, or are you directly editing the material? if you make changes inside a material rather than to a promoted parameter, the shader will have to recompile every time. you can try wrapping your procedural into a Material Builder if it isn't in one already, then promote any parameters you know you'd want to adjust.

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6 minutes ago, toadstorm said:

are your parameters promoted, or are you directly editing the material? if you make changes inside a material rather than to a promoted parameter, the shader will have to recompile every time. you can try wrapping your procedural into a Material Builder if it isn't in one already, then promote any parameters you know you'd want to adjust.

Thanks for the tip.  

Im attempting to implement what you have recommended.  I have promoted a couple parameters from the noise (freq, amp, etc).  Even when they are promoted I still get the notification in the render view for 'generating scene' though, and there is no real speed increase.  Is there an additional step I am missing?    

 

I did notice that if I switch to a shader such as the clay shader, and played around with values (say changed metallic from .4 to .1), the delayed load time (if I can call it that) is still the same, and I am still getting the same notification generally.    

 

Out of curiosity, when you are playing around with values within a shader--say the clay shader, and changing a value like the ior--do you also get a pause between render initialization?   were talking a long pause here too--on my mac i get the little rainbow circle for a couple seconds before I can even touch the software again. .....

 

Im a bit perplexed-- I havent used mantra much since houdini 15, but I dont remember there being such consistent delayed load times..........in fact in the last couple minutes while looking through a few older tutorials--such as one by rohan dalvi when he was building shaders-- he is not getting this delayed load issue and he is changing parameters very quickly----.    

Thanks again!

 

 

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Just now, toadstorm said:

you keep saying "delayed load"... are you actually using a mantra delayed load procedural? or are you just talking about the IPR lag when changing material parameters?

sorry for the syntax--not using a delayed load procedural--just the IPR lag

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2 minutes ago, toadstorm said:

I'm not noticing any significant delay when adjusting the promoted parameters on your material.

What's your system specs, and what build of Houdini are you using? I'm on 16.5.496 on a Win10 laptop.

 

Well....... I just restarted the scene.  

Now it is rendering without delay..............obviously doesn't help my case from a technical standpoint but its a relief nonetheless.  :huh:

I am using a mac pro (2013) 3 GHz 8-Core Intel Xeon E5

Memory 64 GB 

dual AMD Firepro D700

 

Ill keep an eye on the memory usage and general performance using the activity monitor if it happens again.  

 

Thanks for the help!

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