Yes, when using packed Alembics (default) only the object declaration is written to the IFD. The actual geometry is referenced to the Alembic file on disk, hence IFDs stay reasonably small.
> On Aug 20, 2015, at 16:46, Francois Lord <[email protected]> wrote: > > What about disk space? > Can you, in Mantra, reference alembic deforming geometry directly so it > doesn't have to be part of the ifd file at each frame? > > On 2015-08-20 10:40, Sandy Sutherland wrote: >> At Sunrise we had 5 IFD generating machines (Engine lics), and I wrote a >> tool to submit renders from Houdini to RR that had the main render job wait >> for the IFD job to finish, before starting - easy to do. The IFD generating >> was pretty quick, so we did not really have machines waiting to render. >> >> On Thu, Aug 20, 2015 at 3:30 PM, Ciaran Moloney <[email protected] >> <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: >> Pretty sure that applies also to Mantra renders. But, most places have a >> smaller pool of engine licenses and export all frames to .ass or .ifd for >> rendering. Since export times are usually shorter than render times, it >> works out quite efficiently. But yeah, definitely another expense to >> consider. >> >> >> On Thu, Aug 20, 2015 at 11:53 AM, Mike Donovan < >> <mailto:[email protected]>[email protected] >> <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: >> One thing that is a bummer with HTOA is that you will need to purchase a >> Houdini Engine license for every node on your farm unless all the geometry >> creation is done before rendering. >> >> >> This cost be quite steep … essentially a $500 additional cost to each Arnold >> license. >> >> >> >> >
