I found Vulkan not selected by default, even not selectable in preferences.
Is it because of my Mac environment?(M2 Ultra)
I couldn't find anything written about this limitation.

**
TBH, I was really looking forward about Vulkan update in 20.5, since there was significant difference in viewport between PC and Mac.
(such as enabling bloom FX, quality of shadows and ambient occlusion, etc...)

wanglifu
In my test,the variance mode is slower than uniform mode.Why?

How many pixel samples were you rendering with?
variance oracle only really benefits final-frame rendering when large sample counts are used, otherwise the overheads associated with it will probably outweigh the benefits.

wanglifu
And we can't download the daily builds?

Not yet, they'll be ready in approx 1-2 weeks

brians

wanglifu
In my test,the variance mode is slower than uniform mode.Why?

How many pixel samples were you rendering with?
variance oracle only really benefits final-frame rendering when large sample counts are used, otherwise the overheads associated with it will probably outweigh the benefits.

wanglifu
And we can't download the daily builds?

Not yet, they'll be ready in approx 1-2 weeks

I use 256 samples because I can't see much improvement even when I increase the number significantly. Do you mean we should turn off the variance mode in this situation?"

It's quite crazy that you need to know the inner most category of a hotkey binding to search for it.

Now you need to know some obscure names like "Modeling Viewer/Input Selector Triggers" (how many people know what selector triggers are before 20.5?) to set a simple hotkey.

Who came up with this design? I really hope it was a programmer's idea, not someone with a title of UX designer...

gupon
I found Vulkan not selected by default, even not selectable in preferences.
Is it because of my Mac environment?(M2 Ultra)
I couldn't find anything written about this limitation.

Vulkan is unfortunately not supported on Apple silicon at this time due to macOS lacking native Vulkan support. We hope to change this in a future version.

johnmather
Vulkan is unfortunately not supported on Apple silicon at this time due to macOS lacking native Vulkan support. We hope to change this in a future version.

Oh no... But thank you for making it clear.
Really hoping to see this in future!

kodra
It's quite crazy that you need to know the inner most category of a hotkey binding to search for it.

Now you need to know some obscure names like "Modeling Viewer/Input Selector Triggers" (how many people know what selector triggers are before 20.5?) to set a simple hotkey.

Who came up with this design? I really hope it was a programmer's idea, not someone with a title of UX designer...

You can use ctrl+shift+alt+left click to quickly set one command's hotkey.

kodra
you need to know the inner most category of a hotkey binding to search for it.

If you have "Houdini" selected on the left, you can click the key on the visual keyboard to see everything that it is assigned to.

I agree that the search functionality is a step back from the previous search box. RFE for it.

wanglifu

kodra
It's quite crazy that you need to know the inner most category of a hotkey binding to search for it.

Now you need to know some obscure names like "Modeling Viewer/Input Selector Triggers" (how many people know what selector triggers are before 20.5?) to set a simple hotkey.

Who came up with this design? I really hope it was a programmer's idea, not someone with a title of UX designer...

You can use ctrl+shift+alt+left click to quickly set one command's hotkey.

Yeah but some hotkey has no menu item and one has to find them by rummaging through the list (unless I missed something?)

For example I once had a hotkey that enters a volatile state for detached handle (basically Detach Geometry + Orient picking, but it's a volatile key so you don't need to press it twice). It's a built-in feature but there isn't a menu item. The only way I've ever be able to find it in H20.5 is to... find it in H20, write down the category and find it in H20.5 again.

GCharb
You can easily create sculpt layers by stacking nodes, in this example I created 2 layers, remeshgrid1 is set to .05, remeshgrid2 is set to .025, so each layer is remeshed and has its own level of details, works perfectly, sculpt data is passed down no problems, I am loving this, not a full-blown sculpting tool, but still pretty cool!

We need to figure out a non-destructive workflow though, as going back to the 1st sculpt will mess up the 2nd one.
Very nice start to actual sculpting though, looking forward to seeing where it goes.

I'd like to say nice update but copernicus froze 5 times already and in a scene with a lot of fog neither vulkan nor opengl shows anything but solid colors. I guess it'll be alright in a few iterations. Also, no serious color correct nodes? Really ?

Make sure you update your GPU drivers.

By the way a lot of scenes shown in HIVE can be downloaded here: https://www.sidefx.com/contentlibrary [www.sidefx.com]

kodra

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By the way a lot of scenes shown in HIVE can be downloaded here: https://www.sidefx.com/contentlibrary [www.sidefx.com]

Does anyone know if the scene with the locomotive rig is available anywhere?

alexeyvanzhula1984
I am disappointed with the Vulkan viewport. On my simple laptop, the new sculpting is twice as fast using OpenGL instead of Vulkan

https://www.sidefx.com/docs/houdini20.5/nodes/sop/sculpt.html [www.sidefx.com]

For high poly models, the OpenGL viewport is currently significantly faster than the Vulkan viewport.

Perhaps it's not the best idea to make Vulkan the default option though.

Now H20.5 is at an awkward situation: Vulkan and OpenGL viewports both have their cons, but you can't easily switch between.

kodra

alexeyvanzhula1984
I am disappointed with the Vulkan viewport. On my simple laptop, the new sculpting is twice as fast using OpenGL instead of Vulkan

https://www.sidefx.com/docs/houdini20.5/nodes/sop/sculpt.html [www.sidefx.com]

For high poly models, the OpenGL viewport is currently significantly faster than the Vulkan viewport.

Perhaps it's not the best idea to make Vulkan the default option though.

Now H20.5 is at an awkward situation: Vulkan and OpenGL viewports both have their cons, but you can't easily switch between.

Yes, not being able to switch viewports between OpenGL and Vulkan is a PITA.

I always thought that the purpose of the Vulkan viewport was to handle heavier geometry.

Going back to the sculpting. And not sure if this is Vulkan or not. But in a 1M poly object when I try using the new sculpt tool, with one continuous stroke the brush pauses every second and then catches up a bit and then pauses again and catches up, quite annoying. Hoping this can be resolved

Just tested the Bar Scene from the Content Library on my RTX 4070 TI Super 16GB VRAM, default settings with 512 samples...

H20.0 - 8m 57s
H20.5 - 3m 11s

That's a tad over 2.8X faster, more and more impressed with H20.5 XPU rendering on RTX 4.x cards!

Wonder if this is specific to 4xxx or also to 3090

LukeP
Wonder if this is specific to 4xxx or also to 3090

Specific to Nvidia ADA Lovelace graphics cards, that's the GPU for the RTX 4.x cards, those GPUs have better ray-tracing capabilities than previous Nvidia GPUs, XPU was optimized for those GPUs in H20.5!

GCharb

LukeP
Wonder if this is specific to 4xxx or also to 3090

Specific to Nvidia ADA Lovelace graphics cards, that's the GPU for the RTX 4.x cards, those GPUs have better ray-tracing capabilities than previous Nvidia GPUs, XPU was optimized for those GPUs in H20.5!

Crap… have to upgrade now…. but the 3090 has more CUDA cores than 4070 Ti/Super… so if I go down that route then OpenCL acceleration of dynamics etc. would get slower I guess….