Pyro FX tutorial now Online!

[robert.magee]

Learn about the new Houdini 10 PyroFX workflow from Stephen Tucker, Production Specialist, Side Effects Software.

This tutorial uses one of the production-ready Pyro FX presets to get you started. You then learn how to navigate the network, cache out a low-res sim, up-res to get more detail, then use IPR and the VEX Pyro shader to complete your effect.

http://www.sidefx.com/index.php?option=com...&Itemid=305

[stevenong]

I have the page mirrored here.

Cheers!

steven

[Guest Swann]

That was fast, Thanks SESI.

[dior]

pyro is cool but rendering is too too too slow

[michael]

pyro is cool but rendering is too too too slow

compared to what?

[sanostol]

mhh, i have no monster machine, but rendering is quite cool.

pyro is cool but rendering is too too too slow

[Mario Marengo]

pyro is cool but rendering is too too too slow

Efficiency is being worked on. So is filtering.

Stay tuned.

[mrice]

Efficiency is being worked on. So is filtering.

Stay tuned.

That's great! Its already impressive as is.

[Fomal]

regarding the shader, without scatter everything in IPR is nice and fast. With scattering, knowing what to tweak can save you a lot of time. Loving the docs

[bandit]

my question is;what is the sim time of this tutorial(lets say 20 frames) on the fastest computer. in my case,let alone rendering part,i have to invest my hours for the simulation. and i see from the lecturer that,rendering part is another story. are there any cheats to make things a little faster? and any possibility in the near future,that fluid solver gets faster?

ps:my aim is not to attack nor compare king of software's with another package.

[Jordan]

my question is;what is the sim time of this tutorial(lets say 20 frames) on the fastest computer. in my case,let alone rendering part,i have to invest my hours for the simulation. and i see from the lecturer that,rendering part is another story. are there any cheats to make things a little faster? and any possibility in the near future,that fluid solver gets faster?

ps:my aim is not to attack nor compare king of software's with another package.

Yeah, it will great to see user post their benchmark here in odforce for instance computer spec, setting, simulation time and rendering time and such.

[keltuzar]

this to me has been the drawback from delving into houdini fluids- it is slow.

I get the argument that you get all the control in the world, but it is hard to block out simulations if it will take hours to get a decent looking simulation going on.

I do like the segmented fluid simulating on the farm and the up scaling techniques but that isn't helpful if an artist cannot see quick sims on his/her machine.

if houdini can somehow make the speed bearably close to maya's then it will be compelling to work with it on huge scales.

I am hoping h11?

but I have to say, I love this new version so I will take another wack at playing with the new pyro fluid simulator

Edited April 19, 2009 by keltuzar

[Fomal]

Well, I've done a lot of work on the Pyro solvers and all the videos made for the H10 release were done on a single machine, with 2 (my laptop) or 4 (my desktop) cores. Blocking out your simulation on low res should be done in a matter of minutes. Starting with a resolution of 40 and slowly building up to 70. This is where most of the work gets done. After that the upressing. But this should only take a couple of iterations. I managed to get 3 or 4 up ressed simulation out every day. So not spending more then that amount of time on a simulation. This doesn't include modelling, prepping for DOPS and shading. The shading part is tricky and I know scattering can be time consuming. But for simming: these are my general benchmarks:

the highest version of my low res sim should take no more then 15 - 20 minutes. In certain cases I bumped it up to a resolution of 100 - 150, in that case it takes about an hour. But normally this shouldn't be necessary. The up res sim will take more time, depending on your settings. But as a seperate pass you don't have to do this often.

Getting the right look takes about 2 hours, using ipr and depth map shadows. I usually render everything over night. Once I was happy with the look of smoke, the depth maps didn't have to be generated anymore. So that saves time as well.

Hope this gives a bit of an idea.

Cheers Coen

[Jordan]

Thanks Fomal to share the way he work out his sims. I believe in other off the shelve fluid tools like fumefx, I pretty much work the same way as what fomal told us which is blocking out the sim on low res and slowly upres it when we get what we desire. Therefore, I will get my hand busy with the new pyro tool soon. I didn't use H since 9.5. Is unfair if i make any usability comment now until i have tried it.

Still, I would love to see someone post some hidden gems of how to optimize both the sim and the render of fluids. Merely depends on the intro level tutorial is just not enough maybe because of i'm a tutorial whore.

Cheers, the new pyro tool looks nice though(from the demo).

jordan.

Well, I've done a lot of work on the Pyro solvers and all the videos made for the H10 release were done on a single machine, with 2 (my laptop) or 4 (my desktop) cores. Blocking out your simulation on low res should be done in a matter of minutes. Starting with a resolution of 40 and slowly building up to 70. This is where most of the work gets done. After that the upressing. But this should only take a couple of iterations. I managed to get 3 or 4 up ressed simulation out every day. So not spending more then that amount of time on a simulation. This doesn't include modelling, prepping for DOPS and shading. The shading part is tricky and I know scattering can be time consuming. But for simming: these are my general benchmarks:

the highest version of my low res sim should take no more then 15 - 20 minutes. In certain cases I bumped it up to a resolution of 100 - 150, in that case it takes about an hour. But normally this shouldn't be necessary. The up res sim will take more time, depending on your settings. But as a seperate pass you don't have to do this often.

Getting the right look takes about 2 hours, using ipr and depth map shadows. I usually render everything over night. Once I was happy with the look of smoke, the depth maps didn't have to be generated anymore. So that saves time as well.

Hope this gives a bit of an idea.

Cheers Coen

[Fomal]

Still, I would love to see someone post some hidden gems of how to optimize both the sim and the render of fluids. Merely depends on the intro level tutorial is just not enough maybe because of i'm a tutorial whore. wink.gif

I believe a new tutorial is in the making, covering the generation of the first demo (rocket)

I will be hosting a technical evening this Thursday, together with Mario, to cover the new tools from a more in depth point of view. These should be posted on the sidefx website as well.

[dbukovec]

You can make your renders much more faster if You increase the volume step size on the mantra node in the sampling tab. For previews try 0.5.

[goldleaf]

I believe a new tutorial is in the making, covering the generation of the first demo (rocket)

I will be hosting a technical evening this Thursday, together with Mario, to cover the new tools from a more in depth point of view. These should be posted on the sidefx website as well.

Sweet! That's great to hear they will be posted online.

[rodpacker]

Sweet! That's great to hear they will be posted online.

hm, did this tutorial ever appear online somewhere? Must have missed it

cheers

rodpacker

[dyei nightmare]

compared to what?

with maya 2011 fluids... i have to agree... i mean, i love houdini so much, but the truth is the truth, maya fluids are solving faster.

[RontheDon]

with maya 2011 fluids... i have to agree... i mean, i love houdini so much, but the truth is the truth, maya fluids are solving faster.

whilst this might be true today, when "the compared top what" commented was posted Autodesk was just starting to read up on how to implement fluids into Maya => valid comment in my opinion back then