alexmajewski
I've just tested disabling Windows Defender. Excluding houdini.exe had ZERO effect in my case. But excluding an entire folder with my Houdini and all my Houdini packages (Redshift, Labs, etc.) made me go down from 01:30 to 0 0 : 2 3. This is crazy.

@coccarolla can you paste the whole command that you use?

Yes, this is the full command:

C:\Program Files\Side Effects Software\Houdini 20.5.487\bin>hotl -m "C:\Users\...\Documents\houdini20.5\packages\SideFXLabs-20.5.487\otls\*.hda" "C:\Users\...\Documents\houdini20.5\packages\labsSingle.hda"

@D_Caps007 Just got it working by excluding a process. I think that's a much cleaner way to do it, thanks

@coccarolla Try removing double quotes from the sidefxlabs/*.hda argument. It should fix your issue.

alexmajewski
@D_Caps007 Just got it working by excluding a process. I think that's a much cleaner way to do it, thanks

@coccarolla Try removing double quotes from the sidefxlabs/*.hda argument. It should fix your issue.

It only works for a single directory in the otls folder. For example zibravdb_filecache.0.2.hda
If I try to input the full otls folder I can't get it to work.

@coccarolla ok I just realized what's wrong. Sorry, I tested it earlier on Linux and that's why it worked, but now as I test it on Windows it indeed does not work. The *wildcard seems to only work in Bash.

I have MINGW64 Git Bash installed on my Windows and I just tried using hotl.exe with a Bash terminal (on Windows) and it finally worked. I haven't tested that single hda yet, but it weighs ~60mb, so half the size of otls/ folder. Just a heads up, if you end up using Bash for this, then you definitely will need to use / type of slashes.

D_Caps007
I would like to offer you this information that can reduce the loading time (70s to 17s on Windows) of Houdini 20.5 :
1) SideFX Labs must be load in a single HDA.
2) Add Process = houdini.exe to Exclusions in windows anti-virus
(Note (Virus & threat protection settings -> Exclusions) recommends writing the process name with the full path)

THIS WORKED FLAWLESSLY FOR ME !! went from 1-2min boots to less than 20 second! thank you!

In my experience OpenFX it slowed down the Houdini start very much. If the plugins are installed, the license is checked when loading and this takes a very long time. I had this because of the installed RedGiant.