Hi! I've been working lots of rigidbody simulation lately. I am happy with what Sidefx has done for RBD Workflow specially when they release houdini 18.



Sample workflow:

-Prep objects. Categories/separate like (GLASS,METAL,CONCRETE,WOOD) to Groups. You will use this for RBD configure.

-Clean objects. Check for holes, wrong normals, unused points,etc.(Clean Sop/Facet Sop)

-Check the UV.(This is super important after the simulation so that you will not have a hard time doing the Materials)

-Prefragment objects.(RBD Fracture Material). For the constraint i prefer doing it after the fracturing.

-Make inside UV for inside faces(UVunwrap selecting inside group).

-Cache Prefragments Per Object.(RBD I/O) 1 frame only.

-Make Constraint.

-RBD configure(this will help the solver a lot because you can set the density/type of material like GLASS,METAL,CONCRETE,WOOD)

-RBD solver. Configure the Constraint for breaking, Forces and Collisions.

-RBD I/O to cache the simulation.



It is good for simple shots or scenes but when it comes to heavy scenes i notice that it is to heavy to load when opening the scene especially when you have lots of object to prefragment(RBD Fracture Material).

Anyone having the same problem? even if you cache your objects the scene is still heavy/too slow?

Hello!

This issue has been addressed in Houdini 19.5
Most of the nodes do not fully load when opening the scene, but only when cooking/unlocking them.
This is a huge performance boost for heavy scene containing large HDA (like the RBD Material Fracture).

Thanks SideFX!! You are the best!