hello all,
i've read every topic on the subject, consulted with my software engineer buddy, and many others on the problem… no resolution yet though. as of now here is what's going on: originally i never had this issue. first off: i'm on an 8-core early 2008 mac pro, 10 gigs ram, nvidia geforce 8800 gt, leopard 10.5.6

houdini used to be snappy, i would open it, it'd open right away, i'd render, and it would take off with lightning speed. and then, one day, i needed to “give my computer” a name… i always had it at default, but now i've actually named it. for example purposes, say it's called jonathan. so now i have a jonathan as computer name and jonathan.local as the local hostname. this required reliscencing for houdini to work, so i did, and from this point on, now all it does is take FOREVER… example: loading up houdini takes about 2-3 minutes. every time now it also needs to “rebuild ui cache” on every open of houdini. lastly the worst is: if i create a new scene, create a sphere, a light, a camera, and a mantra node, then hit render for 30 frames, *something that used to take me about 30 seconds for the whole thing*, it now is taking 6-7 MINUTES! so this is a big problem for me. also like i said, i read every post many many times on here, and nothing worked for me. i've done this:

delete EVERY preference file, folder, anything i can find with houdini… i go through the UNINSTALLER, restart computer. repaired permissions from within my usual boot drive, REPAIRED PERMISSIONS by doing a BOOT off of my os x disk. and none of this has helped. so then i tried doing the suggestion of doing an APPRENTICE licensing approach during the install, once again this didn't help. and now, i've seriously tried everything i can. i've disconnected the internet from the wall, i've turned off all virus software, firewalls, etc. and once again, none helped. none of my other programs had any problem after i changed my computer name. however, houdini definately has been hit hard. please if anyone has any idea or help, let me know,
thank you for any help

Jonathan

It could be related to the DNS lookup for your new machine name. Please, see this thread [sidefx.com] for more details.

Also, if you are a non-commercial user, you may be able to work around this problem by configuring Houdini to use local licensing [sidefx.com], which does not rely on TCP/IP communication.

yep, i've already tried all of the methods that your links suggested, however none worked.

things i've tried: (all in combinations of, uninstalling houdini, deleting all preference files, etc… and reinstalling it)

a. turn off my internet, *ethernet, wireless*, i've turned everything off…
b. turn off firewalls, virus software, etc…
c. used apprentice licensing during installation
d. repair permissions
e. create new user account, install from this account…

none of my other programs have any issue. if i open maya, and render a sphere, it takes 15 seconds for 30 frames.

houdini… 5-7 minutes…

one of the posts, a guy sent in some samples, and the tech responded that the samples showed that houdini was basically just sitting there waiting for a response from os x… i think this is the same issue i am having however what fixed their issue did not fix mine. theirs was solved by apprentice licensing, while another guys was fixed by turning off his internet, and a couple others were fixed by this method also

to reiterate, the problem occured as soon as i named my computer.

let me know what else i can do to help,
thanks,
Jonathan

If you have a dual monitor set-up, try switching to one monitor and see if that makes a difference.

nope, not a dual monitor set up…

though i'd like to soon!

so i noticed something else strange, and i think it might play a role in this issue. when i uninstall, and delete EVERY preference file i can find, and then rename my computer again, and then install houdini, i notice that in the license adminstrator, that it still recognizes by default the OLD computer name… so that means it is looking at SOME FILE on my computer, that is not deleted with the uninstaller, and isn't being manually deleted by me.

i am deleting anything related to houdini from these folders…

/library/logs

/library/receipts/boms/

/library/preferences/sesi

users/myusername/library/preferences/houdini

in the users folder, there is a hidden pref file, .sesi_licenses.pref

seems like there has got to be some file somewhere that i'm missing, that is keeping a list of all of my computer names… and there is a holdup because there are processes getting lost looking for these past names and since they don't exist it takes a while… i'm not sure. guessing now. problem is i still don't know how to fix it.

*edit*
i just tried removing my entire computer's preferences folder to the trash and then restart. this set my computer name back to default. then i tried installing houdini again… still didn't help. pretty stumped now.

You may be able to use /Applications/Utilities/Activity Monitor.app to sample Houdini application to see what's slowing it down. Just select Houdini and click Sample Process in the Monitor's toolbar.

In the past, the only issue that made Houdini slow was the system call, and we implemented a few workaround mechanisms to avoid that call:
http://blog.pclark.net/2007/08/nshost-currenthost-slowness-and.html [blog.pclark.net]

P.S. The above Sampling suggestion was taken from this thread, which again points to DNS settings:
http://www.sidefx.com/index.php?option=com_forum&Itemid=172&page=viewtopic&t=13404 [sidefx.com]

rafal
P.S. The above Sampling suggestion was taken from this thread, which again points to DNS settings:
http://www.sidefx.com/index.php?option=com_forum&Itemid=172&page=viewtopic&t=13404 [sidefx.com]

hi there, i've been trying to play with “dns” settings as your suggesting but i haven't had much experience with problem solving this sort of an issue. however i found a good article and tried all of their methods but still no luck. i'm a little confused though because even if i unplug my computer from the internet, turn off all of my network settings, the problem still occurs.

so i've been trying everything possible but still nothing yet. was curious if anyone has thought of any other ideas? truly, i'm thinking there is a file that's been installed, most likely hidden, that has kept track of my computer name information, and the call to it, is causing it to spend time looking until it reaches the final “new” name. just a guess but really i can't figure anything out with the dns. i've tried doing a lot of “dns” work arounds that i've read about but once again, nothing helped me out.

i really don't want to, but it's looking like i'll have to reformat to fix this. before i do, i'll wait a couple more days and hope someone has some more insight. thanks all for the time.
Jonathan

update:

so, i reformatted my computer! STILL SLOW! so now i'm officially stumped. i've read many articles on dns, and tried doing everything i saw but nothing fixed the problem. mantra is still taking 6-7 minutes to render a default scene, with a sphere, and a grid and one light, NO SHADOWS, tried with shadows too but still slow. I know houdini is much faster than this.

also tried:
turn off use max processors, and set the number of threads to different values. didn't help. i tried changing the tile size, still did not help. please if anyone can direct me towards other things to try. or a more “direct” approach to the dns solution that has been suggested.

i appreciate it,
J

It looks like perhaps you will need to run another renderer to do a comparison. From the sounds of it, you've made changes in the mantra parameters that should have shown an effect on speed, that your system isn't working correctly and that it hasn't anything to do with Houdini.
However, to make sure, I think you need to run another renderer to make that conclusion.

The DNS thing I could see affecting the time it takes mplay to launch or mantra to start, but it shouldn't affect the speed of the render once it's going.

One other step I might suggest. Get a default OS live disk(I'm not a Mac user so don't know what's available. Will Ubuntu run on that machine?) and run that from your dvd, install Apprentice to that and see how that behaves.

i have made no changes to mantra. all i did was, reformat computer, give computer a name, install houdini, create a sphere, create a camera, create mantra node, set frame range from 1 to 30, set output file to: test1.$F4.tif, *tried .pic too*, and then clicked render. this takes 7 minutes!

a brand new fresh installed houdini!

i have no new preferences on my system, nothing at all. i am at a loss for what to do.

I also just noticed some other stuff:
even with the fresh install, i get the message at the beginning of start up every time: Post install initialization, this will only occur once, message, every time i start up houdini too. Like i said tho, this is a brand new fresh install of Mac OS X! I have not done anything. So there should be default everything, and to still be getting this post install message would point to permissions, but i haven't changed anything. Anyways, I logged out of MY user account, and typed in ROOT for the name and my root password, then tried opening houdini, THIS STOPPED the message from happening. but i should not have to be logged in as root to start houdini. VERY CONFUSED!

When I do hconfig, $HOME is /Users/jonathan

That should be fine!

so, i will try a few more things, and give u guys some samples to look at.

Hope someone can help me out, this is quite annoying, and i truly love houdini, and need to get back to my “work” instead of this weird issue. I'm starting to wonder how i'm the only person with this problem. I did notice however, if i type HOUDINI SLOW, on google, this topic is number one!

hmmm

Okay, will let you know what else i find out, in the meantime i'll be waiting hoping someone has more thoughts for me

probbins
It looks like perhaps you will need to run another renderer to do a comparison. From the sounds of it, you've made changes in the mantra parameters that should have shown an effect on speed, that your system isn't working correctly and that it hasn't anything to do with Houdini.
However, to make sure, I think you need to run another renderer to make that conclusion..

okay i'll try doing that. thing is, it seems like if i had something wrong with my actual computer, that MAYA would not render fast either. But like i said earlier, in maya, i can render 30 frames in less than 30 seconds.

probbins
The DNS thing I could see affecting the time it takes mplay to launch or mantra to start, but it shouldn't affect the speed of the render once it's going.

yes, mantra pops up fast, but then just takes forever to render.

probbins"One other step I might suggest. Get a default OS live disk(I'm not a Mac user so don't know what's available. Will Ubuntu run on that machine?) and run that from your dvd, install Apprentice to that and see how that behaves.[/quote
hmm you just mean using my mac os x dvd as a boot disk?

Just throwing stuff out there..

When you open the license administrator and go to File -> Change License Server, what name does it say? What exactly does your /etc/hosts file look like?

Hi DaJuice,

so here is the info:

when i open the license administrator it says: itriix.local
when i open up the etc/hosts file, it says:

Okay so I did some samples using the activity monitor. here are three files:
1. Sample of Houdini when Houdini is starting up
2. Sample of Mantra during rendering
3. Sample of Houdini during render

tried the other renderers:
mantra8 still takes forever
mantra10 still takes forever
wren : was the only other renderer i could really use, but just to see if it took forever too i checked, it however only took about 1 minute for 30 frames… so i'm not sure if that's just because normally it would only take about 3 seconds for 30 frames or if it's in fact going faster than mantra

so anyways, more info to help the cause,
Jonathan

Ok, apparantly on OS X the hostname is not set in /etc/hosts, but in /etc/hostconfig. I suppose you already have HOSTNAME=itriix.local in there?

DaJuice
Ok, apparantly on OS X the hostname is not set in /etc/hosts, but in /etc/hostconfig. I suppose you already have HOSTNAME=itriix.local in there?

Hi DaJuice,

In etc/hostconfig:
i had to add .doc extension to post the attachment file

i added the HOSTNAME=itriix.local to hosts file, didn't help, then reset it, then tried adding it to hostconfig, still same slowness