I wanted to post this as a self reply on a previous thread but i think this warrants a whole new thread.

I just realised why i dont like modeling smooth subsurf characters in Houdini. Its becouse Subdivide SOP is too slow. I also think the main reason its slow is that it acts on input change by doing the whole subdivision again.

I have some suggestions on the front:

1. Rethink cooking flags

1.1 Pass ‘topology change’ boolean flag downstream
1.2 Pass locale of topology change downstream as a list or think of something better

Subdivide SOP gets the info and does the subdivision on local primitives and immidiate neighbors if topology changed or just interpolates the previous subdivided mesh if topology didnt change.

If its implemented globally some other OPs could benefit from this. If something like this is already implemented, why the h**l isnt subdivide SOP using this info? If its using it…dont use BASIC for programming .

The option #2 being: doing this only in the display layer…As a modifier of sorts. Similar to way XSI is doing it.