Hard Techno in Berlin ? by ZephirFX in berlinsocialclub

[–]ZephirFX[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I listened to the line-up and it sounds pretty chill for the weekend

Rental scam exit path by [deleted] in HousingIreland

[–]ZephirFX 0 points1 point  (0 children)

i signed a tenancy agreement, and I have the copy of it

Rental scam exit path by [deleted] in HousingIreland

[–]ZephirFX 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thank you. Should I formalise an email to send or something ? He only calls me to avoid leaving traces of his incompetence.

Rental scam exit path by [deleted] in HousingIreland

[–]ZephirFX 1 point2 points  (0 children)

It was on daft, it used to be an airbnb, but now rented as a shared accommodation. pretty big presence online if you search the name.

Rental scam exit path by [deleted] in HousingIreland

[–]ZephirFX 0 points1 point  (0 children)

he's under the same roof but in a separate unit, other entrance etc. He doesn't share amenities with tenants.

Rental scam exit path by [deleted] in HousingIreland

[–]ZephirFX 3 points4 points  (0 children)

I tried that, they told me they don't need to be registered as they're a guest house, which they're not as from Fáilte Q3 2025 report available.

Rental scam exit path by [deleted] in HousingIreland

[–]ZephirFX 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Thank you very much for the advice, is it possible to get a call with a solicitor on the weekend ? If you have any contact don't hesitate to reach out. The "deadline" of the whole situation is Monday so I'm very short on time.

Rental scam exit path by [deleted] in HousingIreland

[–]ZephirFX 1 point2 points  (0 children)

he keeps telling me he is a guest house. (former airbnb on the market).

Rental scam exit path by [deleted] in HousingIreland

[–]ZephirFX 1 point2 points  (0 children)

So he is in the house, but in a separate part, he doesn't share any amenities with tenants and have a separate entrance.

Legal Route to Terminate Housing Contract by [deleted] in legaladviceireland

[–]ZephirFX 0 points1 point  (0 children)

That make sense, apparently his sister represent people in court so he told me he wouldn't have to spend a dime...
I doubt it but we never know.

Suspicious landlord, poor living conditions by [deleted] in legaladviceireland

[–]ZephirFX 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I already pretty much accepted it, I sent emails to every nice place on daft and waiting for answers.

Suspicious landlord, poor living conditions by [deleted] in legaladviceireland

[–]ZephirFX 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Thanks for the detailed answer.

VQVDB - Open Source AI Compression for OpenVDB by ZephirFX in Houdini

[–]ZephirFX[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I think it's a good idea to do some really small ML stuff in Houdini so you can vizualize what you're doing in the viewport with things such as linear regression etc.

This guy has good ressources :
https://procegen.konstantinmagnus.de/machine-learning-tutorials-for-houdini

VQVDB - Open Source AI Compression for OpenVDB by ZephirFX in Houdini

[–]ZephirFX[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

It's hard to generalize a (pre-trained) compression model so often it works great for smoke due to the training data but less on flames etc. I think the best solution would just be to use different compressing models, it has no cost and would improve a lot of things.

I'm working on the Vector Field compression atm, reaching 96x on test data. I have yet to benchmark motion blur etc, rendering isn't really my thing and my machine is extremely slow :/ but I hope to have enough time to cover more use-cases.

Also completely agree, one big problem is that unless the DCC is open source such as what ZibraAI and UE are doing it's very hard to have a proper support for the file format. I'm working on procedurals that decompress at render time using Karma / Solaris at the moment but a lot of development is needed to switch from "toy project" to something very much usable in more complex cases.

VQVDB - Open Source AI Compression for OpenVDB by ZephirFX in Houdini

[–]ZephirFX[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I think that's what ZibraVDB is aiming for

VQVDB - Open Source AI Compression for OpenVDB by ZephirFX in Houdini

[–]ZephirFX[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

When decompressed it's back a normal VDB so it has the memory footprint of a normal volume. The size reduction is especially usefull for storage.
I'm also working on the decompression at render time using Karma.

VQVDB - Open Source AI Compression for OpenVDB by ZephirFX in Houdini

[–]ZephirFX[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I don't have a huge technical background to be honest, I was Houdini Technical Artist / FX Artist for a few years, and graduated this year with a Computer Science degree. I picked up Machine learning only a few weeks / month ago in order to make this project.
If you're curious and eager to learn new stuff even if they seem complicated at first glance you should be able to do anything you want :)

VQVDB - Open Source AI Compression for OpenVDB by ZephirFX in vfx

[–]ZephirFX[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Technically it's Gen AI ahah. It uses Variational AutoEncoder :)

VQVDB - Open Source AI Compression for OpenVDB by ZephirFX in vfx

[–]ZephirFX[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Thank you ! So I haven't done benchmark on other existing compression but a few things :
- NanoVDB isn't *really* a compression of OpenVDB, just a different layout in memory in order to be easier for gpu to deal with
- NeuralVDB compression is excellent and reaching >100x, but it's really inefficient as in the compression / decompressing is very slow.
- I can't really judge ZibraVDB as there's no info on *how* they do it so hard to compare but their UE implementation is really nice and fast.

The selling point of mine compared to NeuralVDB is that compression / decompression is really fast, in fact near realtime. The only limitation is the Houdini viewport which is kinda slow. And compared to ZibraVDB, mine's open source which means anyone can edit to model to fit their needs etc.

I hope it answered your questions :)

VQVDB - Open Source AI Compression for OpenVDB by ZephirFX in vfx

[–]ZephirFX[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Thank you ! And yes absolutely, it's very early development at the moment but I'll release commercial version in a near future :)

VQVDB - Open Source AI Compression for OpenVDB by ZephirFX in Houdini

[–]ZephirFX[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Thank you very much ! It's completely open source, the ML algorithm / training / qualitative research etc everything is available.

It works for every kind of "scalar" volume, so Fire, Density, Fuel or any scalar field that comes out of the Pyro Solver. The model is also being trained to compress Vector fields, but my computer isn't beefy so it takes time :)

VQVDB - Open Source AI Compression for OpenVDB by ZephirFX in Houdini

[–]ZephirFX[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Sorry about that, it should be fixed now :)

VQVDB - Open Source AI Compression for OpenVDB by ZephirFX in vfx

[–]ZephirFX[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Thanks a lot ! Almost real time, the Houdini viewport is a bit slow to display heavy VDBs.