Slow Houdini launch

Pipeline Integrations
#1

Has anyone found the houdini engine to really slow Houdini launch?
I’ve got a pretty vanilla config, and have cleared the studios standard PATH and PYTHONPATH environments, but when launching houdini from sg Desktop it’s taking 10x longer than launching houdini from the terminal.

My houdini_path only has the sg engine added to it, so there’s no studio config interfering as far as I can tell.

This is what I’m getting from the app_launch hook :

. PYTHONPATH :
‘/home/users/patrick/.shotgun/union/p412c773.basic.desktop/cfg/install/core/python:’
. HOUDINI_PATH :
‘/tmp/tk-houdini8kmK7q:/home/users/patrick/.shotgun/bundle_cache/app_store/tk-houdini/v1.6.1/classic_startup:&’
. app_path : /Volumes/software/houdini/hfs18.5.408/bin/houdini
. app_args :

Looking at my houdini log, I think this might help, you can see in the timestamps a 2 minute jump around this section :

2021-02-11 20:53:15,232 [121419 DEBUG sgtk.env.project.tk-houdini] Starting metrics dispatcher...
2021-02-11 20:53:15,233 [121419 DEBUG sgtk.core.util.shotgun.connection] Creating shotgun connection from <SessionUser patrick @ https://union.shotgunstudio.com>...
2021-02-11 20:53:15,233 [121419 DEBUG sgtk.env.project.tk-houdini] Added worker thread: <MetricsDispatchWorkerThread(Thread-2, started daemon 140419309852416)>
2021-02-11 20:53:15,234 [121419 DEBUG sgtk.stopwatch.tank.util.shotgun.connection] create_sg_connection: 0.000956s
2021-02-11 20:53:15,234 [121419 DEBUG sgtk.env.project.tk-houdini] Metrics dispatcher started.
2021-02-11 20:53:15,235 [121419 DEBUG sgtk.env.project.tk-houdini] Init complete: <Sgtk Engine 0x7fb60814af90: tk-houdini, env: project>
2021-02-11 20:55:17,941 [121419 DEBUG sgtk.env.project.tk-houdini] Grouped registered commands.
2021-02-11 20:55:17,942 [121419 DEBUG sgtk.env.project.tk-houdini] Collected context commands for dynamic menu.
2021-02-11 20:55:17,957 [121419 DEBUG sgtk.env.project.tk-houdini] Collected app commands for dynamic menu.
2021-02-11 20:56:37,786 [121419 DEBUG sgtk.env.project.tk-houdini.tk-multi-workfiles2] Synchronizing remote path cache...

Can you give any directions on how I can identify exactly what’s causing the slowdown?

Thanks
p.

1 Like
#2

Argh,
I’ve made progress. Disabling the houdinig sg menu and shelf speeds up the load time, but then I’m left without Houdini.
I see in the engine code this issue is recognised in Windows, but there’s less indication that this is an issue under linux.
Basically, SG engine is waiting ages for the houdini GUI to load before finishing initialising… but for some reason, the houdini engine is delaying this far longer than would be the case without SG being loaded.
We’re on linux mint, cinamon desktop. Other than not loading any SG gui elements, and then rolling our own buttons, what can I do to speed things up?
Thanks
p.

#3

Yeah I can confirm the Windows case (on Linux it seemed to be a lot better, at least).
There is also a long time of “Waiting for UI to become available…” which does not seem that much of an issue outside of Shotgun.

Yeah the registered commands line is really suspect here, or what came before it. Most likely commands are being fetched from the server/config. Also I see they are being written to xml, which is how Houdini reads them. Check out tk-houdini/python/tk_houdini/ui_generation.py

Would be awesome if someone would profile and identify the issue.

What version of Houdini is this?

#4

Boo. I’m about to add this integration after updating our core, thinking things would be smooth sailing after that… I’ll let you know if I experience this and find anything.

#5

yap, my experience is same houdini when it lunch is very slowly, how to make fast? site
best regards