greenViolet Posted September 10, 2009 Share Posted September 10, 2009 Hi, Just wondering whether there is a way to improve houdini's RAM performance. I'm using a mac pro (2x quad core 2.26Ghz) with 10 GB of RAM, however I find the speed of my houdini's performance is not up to standard yet, I don't know whether its my machine's configuration or something else.. I'm trying to render a global illumination scene and I know it can be quite slow to render but it has taken more than 30 hour to render 200 frames, which I don't think its normal and when i see the activity monitor Houdini is only using 700MB of RAM while my machines still has 6GB Ram unused. Any help would be much appreciated, Thanks! Surya Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Macha Posted September 10, 2009 Share Posted September 10, 2009 What are you rendering? Optimization depends a lot on what kind of thing you have in your scene. memory might not be the bottleneck. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
greenViolet Posted September 10, 2009 Author Share Posted September 10, 2009 I'm rendering a simple Global Illumination scene (VEX Global illumination),with just a cube and some simple objects (no dynamics simulation whatsoever) with reflective material and ray-traced Shadow .. if it has something to do with my render setting then there's probably something that I should do trials and errors on my part. Im just hoping its not my machine, that's why I ask whether probably houdini has a memory management system for rendering or not Or does it come with full power by default Thanks! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Macha Posted September 10, 2009 Share Posted September 10, 2009 If you have reflective materials and a lot of samples from lights in there, see if switching to PBR render makes a difference. And check how many times your respective rays bounce around. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DaJuice Posted September 10, 2009 Share Posted September 10, 2009 when i see the activity monitor Houdini is only using 700MB of RAM while my machines still has 6GB Ram unused. The amount of available RAM doesn't really have anything to do with how fast a scene renders. In Houdini or any other 3D app, memory only becomes a bottleneck when you run out of it. If the render is only using 700MB of RAM then it doesn't need any more. Driving up sampling and quality settings will consume more memory, but those things will make your renders slower, not faster. I would definitly recommend doing lots of trial and error, it's a good way to learn. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
greenViolet Posted September 10, 2009 Author Share Posted September 10, 2009 Thanks for your answers, Definitely clear things up for me in that case I just have to check my render settings Cheers! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sam.h Posted September 10, 2009 Share Posted September 10, 2009 Hi, Just wondering whether there is a way to improve houdini's RAM performance. I'm using a mac pro (2x quad core 2.26Ghz) with 10 GB of RAM, however I find the speed of my houdini's performance is not up to standard yet, I don't know whether its my machine's configuration or something else.. I'm trying to render a global illumination scene and I know it can be quite slow to render but it has taken more than 30 hour to render 200 frames, which I don't think its normal and when i see the activity monitor Houdini is only using 700MB of RAM while my machines still has 6GB Ram unused. Any help would be much appreciated, Thanks! Surya Just FYI, you need to look at the mantra process not the houdini process to see how much ram the render is taking. Also, make sure you set your bucket size high, then lower it until you find the sweet spot. Start on 256 or so. 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.