My system is :

os: win 7 64bits
display: ati radeon hd 6770m

I am having problem with using houdini on my laptop, all the surfaces are in black shader plus the parameter port and the tab and icons ocassionally black out sometimes. Anyone had the same problem ?

THanks

Sounds similar to an OpenGL driver problem I had previously

As a test, try setting

HOUDINI_OGL_SOFTWARE=1

You should be able to set that from the Houdini Command Line (menu item in Explorer) and temporary confirm if that helps.

If it does, you can narrow things further.

The OpenGL code in Houdini is receiving some needed TLC so future releases of Houdini may see this problem go away.

Regards

I am sorry, I got to the command line and I do not know how to set:
HOUDINI_OGL_SOFTWARE=1

can you have a step by step guide or point me to a page that teaches me how to configure houdini, I am totally clueless.

thanks

ok i got it you just need to type “set HOUDINI_OGL_SOFTWARE=1 ” .
Yup great ! it helps it works now.

but once i restart my houdini, the setting is default to 0 again what can i do to solve this permanently ?

thanks
kianwee

chenkianwee
ok i got it you just need to type “set HOUDINI_OGL_SOFTWARE=1 ” .
Yup great ! it helps it works now.

but once i restart my houdini, the setting is default to 0 again what can i do to solve this permanently ?

thanks
kianwee

To have this permanently enabled (which sounds wrong to me), set the environment variable in

System Properties (Right click “Computer”)
-> Environment Variables

Note: I'd recommend you fix the driver problem or use a different machine as you will be missing out on a lot of features in Houdini without proper OpenGL support.

I am sorry cause I am totally not familiar with all this, fixing the driver problem, how do I go about doing it, you mean the opengl driver on my machine is not working properly?

regards
kianwee

Have you tried updating the Catalyst driver for your laptop? AMD now provides a mobile driver that works with almost all laptops. You can download it here [support.amd.com].

yup I tried and it still doesnt work am I wits end

same boat as you. Seems like there might not be a fix short of ‘buy a new card and use it on a desktop’

You can disable material shaders on the Effects tab of the Display Options for the viewport. This will disable most of the visual effects, but should at least get rid of the solid black shading.

Thanks…my problem isnt shaders (yet?), but the entire viewports/interface going black

You can try setting the environment variable HOUDINI_OGL_DISABLE_FBO instead, that's slightly less intrusive than HOUDINI_OGL_SOFTWARE (and works on platforms other than Windows as well). You'll lose viewport color correction and the OpenGL ROP, but since everything's black, it's better than the current state.