Hi, I'm new to the list though my interest in houdini lasts for some time.
I was always amazed by its architecture and workflow, but I didn't think about houdini as a full featured software. I don't like to switch 3d applications in production (at animating/rendering level) so I look for a complete solution.
Now, since houdini became more character anim oriented I decided to test it's rigging capabilities.
I downloaded SESI rigs and after geting in touch, I found out that they work much slower than any rigs in any software I ever used.

Is it something normal caused by houdini architecture and the complexity of node structure or should I play with my system/workstation setup? (dual AMD 2400 + on radeon 9700)
I think about working on houdini but that was a rather discouraging experience.


Thanks

Peter

which of the rigs did you download?

I don't think they are that slow. only if you try the human one… on the exchange… depending on what your system it is… it can be slow IMHO and I've been rigging in the package for 6 years

most people complain about slow speeds but don't end up making the capturing part of their sop network locked off and not cooking. Also when you think about what is going on in the package it is actually pretty fast.

-k

I installed a fresh copy of 7.0 Apprentice, downloaded the rabbit otl and installed. I created the rabbit and noticed that the rig is responding very slowly. If i click pose and move the character null I have something like 2 fps, the same with hips, ears and on. Only the hands and legs are fast.
The same situation is with human skeleton.
My system is not slow, I tried the possible display options, but it doesn't seem to be an open gl issue since the million polygon scene is quite fast.
It looks like after moving some control object it takes some time to calculate all the connections.

In many other applications rigs respond instantly no matter how complex.
I don't think I spoiled something or make some error because I didn't touch anything.

Peter

Hey peliosis,

I haven't had slow reaction times with my rigs. I have made some rigs myself in houdini and they were pretty fast. I think like he said you need to lock nodes. You might just downloaded the rabbit and threw it in but that does not mean that you do not need to lock nodes. If Houdini is having to calculated a bunch of geometry every time there is an update then it is going to be very slow like you are talking about. I would highly recommend going through the rabbit and looking for places to lock nodes and just watch the sudden increase in speed.

Cheers,
Nate Nesler

P.S. Where are you at anyways I don't think I know you.

The rabbit rig version released at Siggraph and the one that is on the exchange has a very complex spine that is taking up most of the time to solve. Moving any of the paws, ears, neck or tail controls gives you very quick feedback as the spine is no evaluating. Touch any part of the spine and you could possibly run every kin solver on the rig and you hit the spine update.
There is a nice feature that allows you to see what is evaluating in Houdini called the Performance Monitor. You can find it in Windows>Performance Monitor. Turn on enable output then either move a controller or move forward a frame with keys on the rig. You will see all the nodes that have “cooked”. Just don't forget to turn it off before you close the window as it has a huge performance hit associated with it. You can see immediately which nodes are taking the longest to evaluate.

A simpler spine would certainly increase the udpated speeds significantly.

This spine solution has stretchiness and the ability to finely control the twist. Two expensive things to build in.

There are many ways to rig a character in Houdini and this is just one of several approaches that one can take.

The human skeleoton has a siimilar version spine setup plus live scapula locators that is running a ray test as a constraint. The knees on the skeleton also deform using a houdini technique to get an adequate behaviour of bone riding on bone.

These are very sophisticated rigs that are put up there for riggers to tear apart and see what is going on. We sort of gave you the kitchen sink and it is up to you to grab what you like and toss what you don't.

I hope in the future that other users will upload their rigs to the exchange so that we can all share in the vast number of rigging techniques that exist out there.


-jeff

Hey Guys,

Interesting I haven't looked at the Rabbit Rig yet I haven't really had a spare moment. However, when I do get a moment I will look at it. The demo at Siggraph was really awesome.

Cheers,
Nate Nesler

At first thank you guys for an extensive and fast reply

I'm from XSI list at xsibase, and I'd like to learn houdini since I've always been amazed by this software. I downloaded apprentice when it first arrived but due to lack of time and good will I stopped my Hjourney.
Now since I work more and look for solving more things I decided to learn it hard.
In XSI we have very sophisticated and complicated rigs which updates instantly without any performance lost. Basically anything you can build in terms of rigging is very fast.
I tried many other applications and saw different rigs and no one was so slow. Thus I ask you since you have far better understanding of houdini.
I definitely should look up the node tree and fiddle around the rig structure.
But if you would be so kind and try to optimize the rabbit by locking nodes and then move the character null or pelvis or any control element and tell me if it works instantly or force you to wait by crawling after your cursor.

Thanks

Peter

For a comparison, you should also try the beatrice rig. In the Help Browser, go to: Learning Houdini > Character Animation > Posing a character > Part 1. Now hit the Load button. Follow the instructions.

Hey Peliosis,

I tell you what peliosis I will upload one of my rigs that I have not really finished out the way I want mainly because of lack of time. I work so much. Its going on 2:00 am and I am working still. lol I don't know when I will honestly get a chance to look at the rabbit. To be honest I have been more impressed with houdini's rigging than I have XSI. XSI's rigging is better than all the other apps for rigging but I got a much better and faster degree of complexity in the houdini's rigs thus far. I am not a houdini Guru but I have been on the app for awhile. The rig I have is a more simple rig setup for a 5 toe character with animation controls setup. I have not implemented the slider to graphical controls, but I have been told you can do it with the sequence blend which is great but I have not had time to mess with it since I am currently not using houdini in production. I do plan to implement Houdini into the production pipeline soon.

Cheers,
Nate Nesler

Hey peliosis,

Its called Simple Character Rig with 5 Toe Foot Controls. Its fast. You will have to bind it to a character to test it out with geometry though.

Cheers,
Nate Nesler

Hi,

The Beatrice rig works just fine, it is a very simple one though.
Thanks a lot for your rig Nate!
It is very nice, I'll study it in first free moment.
Posing the pelvis is not instantenous, perhaps it's just what houdini works, so I'd better stop asking.
The procedural power gives controlability with some performance cost, as I see it.

Thanks a lot guys, it's a great forum I've learned a lot from you already.

cheers

Peter

You mentioned that you are using a radeon 9700. I have a 9600 on my laptop and it is slow with complex scenes and rigs that work fine on my office computer. The issue is that Houdini uses opengl for a lot of the UI and when this slows down it will make the rig seem sluggish. The FireGL cards from ATI are recommended and provide the OpenGL capabilities to run Houdini's UI efficiently.

Other people in the office have the nvidia consumer level 5200 and the rigs run properly. The differences between consumer and professional level cards is more obvious with ATI while nvidia blurs the line a little more.

Hello and thanks for a reply.
I don't consider it an open GL problem though, I tested it also on my old good Ti 4600 and the rigs slows down while I can easily tumble a 200K polygons of some model.
Doesn't matter, I'm on my way to upgrading hardware and houdini is such a great environment that some rig lazyness is not a big issue.
I believe I could optimize them if I wouldn't be a beginner in this software.

Thanks

Peter Twardo

Hey,

Actually he is correct Houdini does not work well with lower end graphics cards. It is a OpenGL issue the reason is that houdini makes calls to opengl graphics commands that are only on the highend 3D cards and not on the lower end 3D cards for the interface alone for updates etc. I highly recommend getting a NVIDIA card because I had an ATI X1 256 pro card and there was all kinds of problems with houdini due to ATI's bad drivers. I put in an NVIDIA card, xgl 980 and it ran faster despite the fact that it was less hardware and to top it off all my problems literally disappeared. There were so many problems. Like in Lightwave if I did anything other than wire frame it crashed Lightwave. Another good one was in Softimage and in Maya constant bugs that otherwise would not exist. NVIDIA is also defantly the way you want to go if you want to use Linux.

Cheers,
Nate Nesler

As I said, high poly scene works fine in apprentice on both radeon and geforce, XSI works very well on both also.
If I change a graphics card soon I'll post how it works.
But could you tell me if moving rabbit's pelvis is instantenous on your quadro?
Just curious.

Thanks

Peter

The deformations are not up to your VideoCard, but to your CPU ( at all ). If your videoCard works fine with the polyCount of this rabbit without applied deformers then this deformation slowness seems to be somewhere bethween Houdini and your CPU. As i can see your CPU is good enough …

Back to the eternal question - what is best for us - flexibility or speed … or both ?!

I wrote three times that it's not open GL thing
And yes, flexibility most important but character animation is little spontaneous work and there should not be any workflow drawbacks like performance issues, just my 5 c's

Peter