Many VDBs and scene optimization

[jeremyshin]

Hello guys,

I have a scene which contains many different VDBs with pretty high resolution.
I was wondering what was the best practice to optimize the viewport and octane. I am currently using C4D Instance object but it doesn't seem to improve the speed.

Does copying the VDB object (using the same path for the same VDB file) keep using the memory of 1 VDB ?
Is there a way to reduce the voxel count while working ? (I am aware of the voxel multiplier but would like to divide them instead).

Thanks,
J.

[aoktar]

Are you using animated VDBs? Are you using voxel display for viewport? Otherwise it does not use Cpu for viewport.

[jeremyshin]

I use static VDB and indeed disabling Voxel Display improved viewport speed.

I tried to work in Centimeters for import unit and scale by 1000 times but it doesnt reduce the resolution.
What I am looking for is a way to work with a low voxel count VDB and just bump it up before rendering. Because the playback in Octane liveviewer is terrible and I can't even art direct my lights.
Is such thing possible aoktar ?

Thank you,
J.

[aoktar]

I don't think it's about viewport acceleration. Suppose your render speed is locking it. What happen when you pause render?

[Hurricane046]

Octane VDBs are bit difficult to work with. I've just finished this project and noticed couple of things (hope it helps shed some light on current issues with VDBs).




1. VDBs shouldn't be viewed using "Voxel display" option. It lags the viewport tremendously on project open. So I just worked with bounding boxes (that's usually enough to see where the cloud is).

2. Many different VDBs load into the LV some time but I don't think it's that long to be considered broken somehow. You can definitely build large scenes using loaded VDBs or generated VDBs or even by using Volume Builder.

3. jeremyshin Does copying the VDB object (using the same path for the same VDB file) keep using the memory of 1 VDB ?
I believe they do. More copies of the same VDB doesn't increase my VRAM usage or LV load time.

4. jeremyshin Is there a way to reduce the voxel count while working ? (I am aware of the voxel multiplier but would like to divide them instead).
I always used proxies of my clouds. I simulated very "shitty" looking version of a cloud and when I was happy with the look in the scene I subsituted it by nicely-high-detailed-simulated cloud (all this done using TurbulenceFD plugin).

5. Using VDBs in cloner is a good solution UNLESS they overlap. Any oerlapping VDBs cause huge huge issue which looks like this

[jeremyshin]

Thanks for your detailed reply Hurricane !
I have kind of similar scene situation as yours.

I am using Mitch Myers VDB pack and I think that the VDBs all come only at full resolution, which may be the reason why the reactivity of Octane Liveviewer is very poor.

I will try to contact him and see if he as a workaround.

Thanks for everything
J.