I’m more of a “user” than a “technically gifted” person. So I’ve put together and built all my last workstations together with a good mate who, unlike me, really knows his stuff. Today it’s about testing whether this can also be a customised workstation, assembled in an Nvidia Studio certified company? So people who are familiar with such things put together the right components in joint consultations and ordered the package from Schenker XMG.

Nvidia 4000?

At the time of testing, the Nvidia 4000 cards were not yet available – but the hard work grinds slowly, which is why we are looking at the 3090 version here. However, our colleague Finkbeiner will be taking a look at Houdini, AI cores and the generation leap at the next available opportunity when test devices are available – which is why we only touched on these features very briefly in our test.

What’s coming from XMG?

The large parcel was delivered by DHL and I was glad that they delivered on the first attempt this time. In the large box, surrounded by several air cushions, were the actual box with the workstation, as well as the boxes for the Nvidia card and motherboard.

In contrast to the packaging for the graphics card, the box for the motherboard was very heavy. One look inside later and I found a bag with a lot of cables and backplates that had to be removed to give the graphics card access to the outside world. Next to it was the manual and a USB stick containing all the important drivers.

The workstation itself was in another box and additionally secured with foam inserts. Once you have finally freed it completely, you can see a sticky note – a request to remove the additional transport protection inside the workstation before starting it up for the first time. Someone has thought of this, because as a DAU user, you would immediately look for the nearest power connection to quickly see the new device in action.

My previous computers usually had screws on the back that had to be removed in order to slide the side panel backwards. With this Fractal Design Torrent Compact Black Solid case, however, I found no such screws at the back. A simple, careful attempt to simply slide the side panel backwards did not produce the desired result either. In a video I found, the explainer simply pulled the wall away to the side and fortunately also showed a place where the side panel could also be secured with a screw.

On the “back” of the motherboard, the rear panel was secured with a screw, but not on the front – this was also the side from which the transport lock could be removed from the computer.

Under the bonnet

This gave me the opportunity to have a look around the inside of the workstation. None of my previous computers had as much free and empty space inside as this workstation. The cable management was also exemplary. Nothing hangs around anywhere. Everything is connected where it makes sense and attached to the housing.

And where you have already opened it, you can also see the screw that secures the side panel. It’s not only with 3ds Max that looking helps! At first I even assumed that the large hard drive wasn’t in there at all, but this later turned out to be a mistake on my part. With such an interior, the airflow for cooling has a clear path to do its work.

However, it was also lucky that I had had a look inside, because two fastening clips for the fans were no longer in their correct position and would therefore not really fulfil their task safely. This probably happened when the transport securing device was pushed into the computer – or DHL is rallying again.

External values

The case itself has a clean look with the power button at the top centre front surrounded by two USB 3.0 and one USB-C ports. There are also two sockets for a headset and microphone and a small button on the other side for a forced restart if the machine gets too bogged down in a task.

Inner workings

At the rear, the Asus Prime Z690-P D4 motherboard offers two USB 2.0 ports (Type-A), one USB 3.2 Gen 2 port (Type-A), one USB 3.2 Gen 2×2 Type-C port, two USB 3.2 Gen 1 ports (Type-A), one Realtek 2.5Gb Ethernet port, one optical S/PDIF output, five audio jacks, as well as one HDMI port and one DisplayPort, neither of which we need because of the RTX 3090 at the centre of the workstation.

Inside, in addition to the aforementioned mainboard and graphics card, an Intel Core i9-12900 processor, which is kept at the right temperature by a Noctua NH-U12A CPU cooler, and two 32 GB DDR4-3200 Corsair Vengeance LPXs provide the thinking power. The power supply is regulated by an 850 Watt Seasonic Focus Plus power supply unit. The supplied system was rounded off with a 1 TB M.2 Samsung 980 PRO and a 2 TB M.2 Samsung 980 PRO as well as an 8 TB Seagate Ironwolf Pro HDD with 7,200 rpm, which was hidden in the upper area under the top cover. All in all, this sounds like a really good combination on paper

It’s alive!

But now: connect the power supply and keyboard, mouse and monitor and you can finally press the button to start the computer for the first time. You can hear a slight breathing noise, but otherwise the workstation is pleasantly quiet. There are few things worse than sitting next to a hissing and groaning monster. Let’s see when I start to plague the box a little.

All the basic components I’ve plugged in so far, such as the mouse, keyboard and monitor, were recognised straight away and I want to have a look around the new system. However, Windows 11 first wants to get to know its environment and users and has presented me with a checklist that I should work through first. As this was my first direct encounter with Windows 11, I had to be careful – clicking “Next” without reading the texts would have quickly landed me with an unwanted subscription to Microsoft Office and a Game Pass.

Tests

I’d love to jump straight into my favourite programs now, but I should run a few tests first. After all, this article is about finding out whether I will continue to assemble my own computers in the future or whether I can rely on assembled systems from experienced companies.

So I put together the usual programmes. These are Cinebench from Maxon and V-Ray Benchmark from Chaosgroup. In just fifteen minutes, I’m already smarter. While the Cinebench test was still in progress, I had already shot up to second place. Somehow this is a source of pride, even though it wasn’t even me who assembled the system. At the end of the test, the system remained in second place in Cinebench R23 with a score of 27217.

The V-Ray benchmark delivers three different tests. The V-Ray Render test scored 18039 Vsamples, the V-Ray GPU CUDA test resulted in 2054 Vpaths and the V-Ray GPU RTX test finished with 2681 Vrays.

To test the speeds of the installed drives, I used the Aja system test. The 1TB M.2 Samsung 980 PRO NVMe and the 2TB M.2 Samsung 980 PRO NVMe had a read speed of 5429MB/sec and 5384MB/sec on a 1G file and the 8TB Seagate Ironwolf Pro HDD had a read speed of 255MB/sec. The write speeds were, in the same order, 4350 MB/sec, 4191 MB/sec and 234 MB/sec. The fact that the large hard drive is significantly slower was of course to be expected from the design. After all, it is only supposed to store the data.

Warranty and advantages

I wouldn’t give myself a three-year warranty, but I get one here. If a problem were to occur with this system within the next 36 months,Schenker XMG wouldpick up the computer, repair it and return it. It also comes with a fully installed operating system, which I still have to personalise, of course. All the drivers for all the built-in components are already set up, but they may still need to be updated to the latest version. In my case, I then installed the latest Nvidia Studio driver before I started the real tests with my favourite programs.

Studio tools?

While the latest version of 3ds Max and Adobe Substance Tools is loading, you can also try out what the supposedly clever “Nvidia Studio Tools” are all about. “Broadcast” sounds practical, and in a test call with the dishwasher running and children shouting outside the house, the person opposite won’t notice a thing. And the resource monitor jumps up by 2% in the system – you can almost carry on rendering in the meantime! The “Background Replacement” works without a hitch, eats up another per cent of system resources, but a white wall is no great challenge.

Compared to the old machine, the “additional load” on the system is ridiculous – there it was just under 20% more, and a few stoppers were also added. So if you often give webinars and courses, you can get a plus in professionalism for free, or, depending on your disposition, save yourself the hassle of cleaning up. Omniverse-Suite and Canvas tests will follow soon!

Everyday life in Max

Finally, I can turn my attention to why I bought such a machine in the first place. One of my main programmes is 3ds Max and I had just created a scene on my work computer with a procedural object with well over 1.5 million polygons. On my work computer, consisting of an AMD Ryzen Threadripper 1920X 12 processor, 64 GB RAM and an RTX 2080, I can actually work quite well and smoothly with this scene. However, as only 10 to 100 FPS are achieved in some cases, there are stutters here and there. Of course, my work computer is older than the test system in all components, but I would still like to see if there is a significant difference.

The scene loaded quickly and was also easy to edit. The FPS hardly ever dropped below 100. I was also able to leave the “Show Endresult” button switched on for this more complex modifier stack and easily make adjustments further down in the stack, which I can then also see interactively in real time.

Everyday life in Substance

A working project with a size of 2.3 G has developed in Substance Painter during the training that has just been completed. It still behaves well on the work computer. But I would like to see how this project behaves on the workstation that is currently available for testing here.

Even loading this rather heavy project went smoothly. Zack and the project is open. I was also impressed by the layout of the preview images for the materials and brushes. On my work computer, I sometimes have to wait many seconds for all these preview images to appear one by one. On the test system, this happens almost in real time as I scroll down the palette. Editing the project also ran really smoothly. Substance Painter often has to think for a short time before finally displaying the result of the procedurally created masks and textures in the 3D view window. Even on this workstation, the thinking bar was occasionally briefly visible, but to talk about seconds here would be an exaggeration. It is really fun to work with this programme on this system. It’s also nice to switch on the higher values in the Substance Painter Display Settings so that everything looks really good without having to worry about the computer going down on its knees. On my workstation, I usually leave the resolution of a project at 2048, as I can specify higher resolutions when exporting the textures anyway. On this workstation, I was able to work just as fast as 2048 even at the highest resolution.

Everyday life in 3d Coat

I didn’t have a current heavy scene in 3D Coat, but that didn’t stop me from putting together something with many millions of polygons. So I connected various objects in voxel mode, created technical objects with the sketch tool, opened a few existing scenes and carried out various operations. So far, everything has run smoothly and I haven’t yet managed to make the computer sweat or stutter. The fan has also not become louder in any of the tests so far. So it is pleasant to work with.

And what does it cost?

In terms of price, this solution was similar to our self-assembled system from two to three years ago and I didn’t have to assemble anything. However, as hardware and prices change all the time, I put the components installed here directly into a shopping basket with one of the component suppliers and came out at around 4055 euros. However, I was then informed by my mate, who knows his way around, that even now the prices are fluctuating greatly and that there has just been a significant drop in prices. Apparently I missed something with crypto? Was that important?

Of course it would be cheaper to buy the individual components, but then it’s my knowledge and my time to put everything together myself. I would have to install everything from the operating system to the drivers myself. In my particular case, that would even be someone else’s work and time, namely the person who knows the ropes. Apart from that, I’m sitting here in front of a system that was put together by certified professionals and simply works straight away in all areas.

Conclusion

Even as a non-technician, but a pure mouse pusher or actually rather a tablet scratcher, here is a solidly built box at a competitive price – and even if I don’t know the difference between DDR4, i9 K/S/xyz, the “Nvidia Studio sticker” helps. Without gaming lighting, but with plenty of power reserves and a system optimised for “content creation” (as all artists and 3D/video people are apparently currently referred to), you can start working straight away. Of course, you can certainly also play games on the machine, but I much prefer to create content than play with it.

All the points that we criticise are down to companies that are only peripherally involved with the machine – DHL and Microsoft respectively.

The post XMG Studio tested first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Mike Kuhn.

And here’s the beta disclaimer: This article was written before the release of H19.5, so something may have changed..

Rigid Body Dynamics – RBD

It’s getting down to the nitty gritty! RBD is what Houdini is best known for – rigid body simulations. Usually, but not always, to break something. Many of the RBD nodes have been given a tidy new user interface. The parameters are now organised in logical tabs and panels. Rarely used parameters have been “hidden” so that they are not in the way and distracting.

Even more important, however, is the new workflow. Parameters should no longer be set in the solver but in separate “Configure” nodes (e.g. “RBD Configure”). Import and export nodes have been have been adapted to each other and are structured in the same way as the I/O nodes of other solvers, for example the Pyrosolver. The other I/O improvements are not so obvious, as they are more about speed improvements under the bonnet and better handling of inputs and outputs.

RBD I/O 2.0

In Houdini, data, be it geometry or animation, is always outsourced wherever possible. Of course, this also applies to simulation data, proxies and constraints. Geo, proxy geo and constraints can now also be written together in a single file. “RBD I/O” makes it easier to name this data, select the path and folder and create version numbers. In the past, Houdini users had to build this functionality themselves or the Studio pipeline developed tools for it. The file name and path are therefore made up of parts and these can also be variables. In Houdini, $HIP is the path where the Houdini Scene *.hip is saved. All this already exists here and there outside of RBD in Houdini, now this naming workflow is also implemented for RBD. Furthermore, the fourth input of the node is now exclusively for Simulation Points (instead of Geometry and Points in previous versions).

DOP I/O – DOP Import 2.0

The new 2.0 version is of course faster and has a tidier UI. The improvement in speed is particularly noticeable in large scenes, such as crowd animations. And here, too, there is now the Quick Setup drop-down menu in the UI with 2 selection options: “Transform High-Res Geometry” and “Cache Simulation”.

RBD Material Fracture: Performance and memory improvements here too. If, for example, two pieces of wood that are in a group (selection), but also 100 units that are far apart, were to be transformed into wood splinters, this took ages. Now such a scenario is much quicker.

RBD Transform: “RBD Transform” was added in response to numerous user requests and makes it easier to place RBDs. It is similar to the normal Transform Node, but has the three inputs and outputs required for RBD (High-Res Geometry, Constraints, and Proxy Geometry). RBD Match Transforms: With RBD Match Transforms, manual adjustments to individual fragments of an RBD simulation can be included in the stream again. UX improvements: RBD Constraints from Curves and RBD Constraints from Lines
now have a nice HUD.

Pyro & FLIP Fluids

FLIP solvers are hybrid solvers that use both particles and volumes for simulation. These FLIP fluids are not new per se – but they are now also available in the SOP context. That’s awesome!
SOP-based FLIP fluids enable fast, simple setups that no longer require sending back and forth between SOP and DOP. In the past, this has made many things technically difficult to understand and cumbersome. This is now a thing of the past and – I repeat – very cool!
In addition, new methods have been introduced that simplify the addition and removal (source/sink) of particles. The simulation container, i.e. the area in which the simulation is to take place, can not only be a box, but also a cylinder or a sphere. Even deforming animated shapes are possible. There are also presets for temperature, viscosity, beach waves, oceans and melting rubber animals.

Pyro

The “Pyro Sources SOP” can generate pyro instances which are distributed to scattered points – for example for very large explosions, dusty storms or forest fires. Compared to before, these can now be different sources at the same time. The timing of the ignition and the transformation can be adjusted. The whole thing can also be realised with a special packed workflow, the Pyro Source Pack. Pyro Spawn Sources and Pyro Source Instance Operators enable an even more flexible workflow. The new Pyro Spawn Sources and The Pyro Source Instance SOPs create and instantiate spawn points. And Houdini Pyro Simulations have GPU-accelerated noise.
KineFX and Channels (CHOPs)

KineFX, the rigging and animation framework and toolset freshly introduced in Houdini 19, mainly gets many detail improvements. But also new functions in the area of UI and user-friendliness. I/O is also a big topic here again.

Animation

In the area of character animation and rigged animation with skeletons, H19.5 contains a huge number of detailed improvements to the MotionClip SOP, the MotionClip Extract SOP, the MotionClip Pose Delete SOP, the Rig Pose SOP, Rig Match Pose SOP, etc. Some of the improvements here with a little more detail.

MotionClip SOP Viewport State

SOP nodes that output motion clips can now visualise these clips to display movements or poses. A freely selectable colour gradient can be chosen to represent time. The current frame is also highlighted (or “highlighted”? What a word!). This makes it easier to edit rigged animations, be it motion capture data or animations created elsewhere. The whole thing is a so-called ViewPortState, which shows the direction in which Houdini is heading in terms of UI and viewport. It is becoming more and more user-friendly and the basis for this is the development of viewport states.

Frame rate change and key position handling

Frame rates and animation keyframes are closely related. It is annoying if the frame rate has to be changed later for whatever reason. Should the existing keyframes remain at the keyframe number or at the same time? And what happens if there is no frame at all? Should it then be snapped to the next one or should the keyframe be on a subframe? All of this is now easier to set. Any changes to the timings must now be confirmed explicitly and are not carried out automatically as before.

Animation Channels – CHOP

The good old CHOPs also get something new: The Pass Filter CHOP, which filters audio as a control signal for animations, now also gets a Butterworth filter, which is particularly steep and thus enables a more precise frequency separation.

Procedural Rigging

The new Joint Capture Paint SOP replaces the old Capture Layer Paint SOP in the KineFX Capture workflow. There is a Rig Tree in the UI, and some new viewport states. A new Point Capture SOP, Character Blend Shape Channels SOP. Since it would go beyond the scope of this article, here is a list of the Procedural Rigging SOPS that have been improved: Attach Joint Geo SOP, Joint Capture Biharmonic SOP, Character Blend Shapes Add SOP, Character Blend Shapes Extract SOP, MotionClip SOP, MotionClip Extract SOP, MotionClip Pose Delete SOP, Rig Pose SOP, Rig Match Pose SOP, Blend Shapes SOP, Rig Doctor SOP, Orient Joints SOP, Visualise Rig SOP and if I’ve missed any I apologise. Procedural rigging is obviously an important topic. Unfortunately, it’s a bit neglected in this article, but we’ll make up for it!

Input/Output

A lot is really happening with regard to I/O in the H19.5 release. I/O is getting the attention it deserves. There is a special character I/O SOP with motion clip support. FBX support for characters has been improved. “Dem Bones Skinning Converter” is not a band name, but a converter to turn animations with geometries that have no topology changes into bones animations. The USD Skin Import SOP, Mocap Stream SOP have been improved. And something with Qualisys.

Still water is new! The Shallow Water Solver

The new Shallow Water Solver SOP is another small highlight in H19.5. What was that? “Still waters run deep” is not true here. Still or little moving water, i.e. without breaking waves or splashes, can now be displayed in Houdini as a 2.5D heightfield (like the terrains). In the example, the water flows down a mountain. Sources and outflows are defined by masks. And moving objects can also displace the water. The “Shallow Water Solver SOP” is not suitable for complex water, but that’s what Vellum and Flip are for.

Oceans

On most computers, Houdini uses the FT implementation from Intel’s MKL library in the “VolumeFFT SOP” and Ocean_sample VEX function. This is much faster at 4K Ocean Spectrum resolutions. And Ocean Rendering in Karma CPU is made possible. Yeah..

Solaris

Solaris is Houdini’s scene layout, lighting and rendering tools. Solaris is based on the Universal Scene Description (USD) framework from Pixar. Several interface improvements, for example in the render settings and some new nodes, ensure that Solaris, which was introduced in H18 (end of 2019), is slowly emerging from the early adopter/ beta feeling. Look development, material library, rendering, caching and import and export are also being optimised. The new Houdini Procedurals Hair LOP generates rendertime hair from guide curves and skin prims. And the Houdini Preview Procedurals LOP enables interactive previews of the procedures.

Other new Solaris Nodes are:
Reference 2.0 LOP, Edit Prototypes LOP, Isolate Scene LOP for Solaris stuff
Light Filter Library LOP for Karma Light Filter Shaders and MaterialX nodes.
Motion Blur LOP, File Cache LOP, Match Size LOP – Matching and centring of prims and models.
Cache 2.0 LOP – efficient caching of subframe samples.
Coordinate System LOP – coordinate systems.
Karma Cryptomatte LOP – Cryptomatte AOVs for Karma.
Karma Ocean LOP – Rendered Ocean Spectra and foam with Karma CPU.
Scene assembly and layout

Again some detail improvements: The Layout LOP now also has a stack and a paint brush. Houdini is on the way to providing interactive tools for set dressing and scene layout. Houdini wants to be not only procedural but also art-directible and artist-friendly. It will be!

Karma

Karma is Houdini’s own renderer, which works together with Solaris and will probably eventually replace Mantra. Some of the new features have therefore already been mentioned in the Solaris section. As you would expect, Karma has become faster. The highlight with regard to Karma is a first version of the “Karma User Guide”, with tips and tricks for optimising rendering with Karma. As with all new help and user guides, I’m really impressed by the detail and illustrations. This is how documentation works!

Shading

The new features in the shading toolset are quickly listed: Principled Shader VOP and Karma Nested Dielectrics VOP now support dielectric materials in MaterialX/Karma. The Karma OCIO Colour Transform VOP transforms colour manually, and Karma Ray Import VOP imports ray variables for MaterialX shading graphs. Karma Volume VOP combines VDF and EDF volumes Karma-friendly, and last but not least Karma Rounded Edge VOP render-time edge rounding and Karma Curvature Surface surface curvature – but both only work with
Karma CPU.

MaterialX

MaterialX is the material counterpart to USD. Not much new and Lama (Material Layer) is unfortunately not yet supported. MtlX Color Correct is a new wrapper to make the MaterialX Colour Correction Nodes more user-friendly. MtlX Facing Ratio is the new node to create a nice soft falloff. The version numbers are now: UsdMtlX update USD 22.05, MaterialX library version 1.38.4.

What’s new PDG/TOPs

PDG (Procedural Dependency Graph) can be used to distribute and process tasks. This can be, for example: rendering, simulation, geometry and landscape generation, Python scripts, connections to other applications (via API) such as render manager, project manager etc. The whole thing works both locally and on other computers and in other apps such as Photoshop or Maya. Python always works anyway, but many things are already well connected.

The Procedural Dependency Graph or TOPs (Task Operators) is certainly the most “exotic” and technically challenging part of Houdini. TOPs was introduced in H17.5 (March 2019). In the meantime, it has become an indispensable part of larger and smaller pipelines. The PDG options for working with USD data have been improved. Error messages for attribute evaluation and the PDG API have been improved. I won’t go into details for reasons (DP is not a programmer magazine and I only understand this to a certain extent).

Global attributes and two nodes are also new: Attribute Promote TOP and Attribute Reduce TOP. TOP Schedulers: The connection from PDG to Deadline, Tractor or even Houdini’s own render manager HQueue, get several “enhancements” in H19.5. TOP Partitioners have been improved in terms of the use of arrays and the partitions can now be sorted by name. The JSON input TOP has been extended.

PDG Services

Crowds

There are now new versions of Agent Look At DOP and Agent Look At Apply DOP. The agents now also track point clouds or other agents. The attention span of the agents can be defined – how interesting a target is can depend on the distance, the relative speed or whether it is in the field of view of the agent. The rigs can now be controlled by the agent.

Agents

Agents can now have a “Rest Pose” that is used when animations do not move every joint. The Crowd Solver DOP can now handle animation layers. And other detail improvements.

Vellum

Vellum shape matching simulations are another small highlight. The shape is first filled with spheres of different sizes. The constraints of the spheres are set very hard. These sphere objects are then used to simulate. This is ultra-fast, as they are only spheres. At the end, the sphere objects are then exchanged for the geo again, hence “shape matching”. In order to run these “shape matching” simulations on the GPU, Nvidia Ampere graphics cards (from 30 series) are probably required. Otherwise it has to run on the CPU..

Vellum I/O 2.0

The Vellum I/O 2.0 node is now like the Pyro, FLIP fluid, and RBD I/O nodes in terms of UI structure, parameters, and basic functionality.

Static topology

In the Vellum Constraints SOP there is the new Static Topology parameter. This makes them static, i.e. they will not slip, break, be removed or welded. This prevents large and dense objects, such as high-resolution tetrahedra, from having to be recalculated (recoloured), even though this would not be necessary.

Vellum Attach Constraints SOP

The new Vellum Attach Constraints is an interactive tool for editing geometry and stitch constraints. Lines can be attached interactively between fabric and target geometry. Very similar to the RBD Constraints from Lines node.

Resolution Independent Tetrahedron

Then there is the fact that the tetrahedrons have rehearsed a rebellion and can now change their resolution without changing the simulation much.

Modelling

I had already announced it in the last Houdini release article. Houdini is becoming more interactive. Both TopoTransfer and Curve, the curve tool, are getting significant improvements. For example, better operation with a stylus/pen input as far as Topotransfer is concerned. The Curve tool can now add Orient attributes to points and has better interaction in Bezier with two curves. In addition, rounded edges are much easier to set, and keyboard shortcuts and radial menu are optimised. “Convert Line” can now convert edges into curves, to be found in the “Curve from Edges” shelf.
And there is now a primitive for 2D spirals and 3D helixes that leaves nothing to be desired. Both archimedean and logarithmic spirals are created, left or right turning, with all necessary attributes.

Other news

Python 3.9! And Houdini now supports native fullscreen mode for the poor macOS users. Volumes can be illuminated by environment lights in the viewport. And 15 nodes are now verbified i.e. multithreaded, e.g.: dopimport::2.0, fit, groupsfromname, lidarimport, polywire, pointcapturecore and some kinefx nodes.
And last but not least, there is something completely new: the “Dashbox – An interface for finding things”. This new, nerdy search is to be integrated into other existing search functions in the future (i.e. not yet)… At the moment it is self-sufficient, but a quick keyboard control à la Everything/Autohotkey will certainly be helpful when it is in full use.

The post Houdini 19.5: I/O – UI – RBD -FLIP – PYRO – UX .. first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Olaf Finkbeiner.