I'm going through the tutorial on the apprentice cd entitled ‘Image3D Volumetrics’. It cuts out near the end of part one so I missed some steps but part 2 does a little recap so I think I'm not missing anything. Anyway, the 3d texture generator doesn't work when I try rendering, I get the error ‘Unable to execute program: i3dgen’

Is this feature not available in Apprentice?

I have the same error when I try to run the 3d texture generator in the apprentice edition - I can't seem to find any documentation stating that the feature is disabled. In fact, the i3dgen.exe program exists (and I can run it), just not from within the ROP section of Houdini Master.

I was trying to do the TechImage contrails demo.

Has anybody else successfully used the 3D texture generator from within the Apprentice edition?

Hi,

Have you make sure that the enviroment variable for Houdini's /bin directory is set?

In your environment path, make sure you have something like:

C:\Program Files\Side Effects Software\Houdini 5.5.151\bin included in your PATH variable.

Cheers,
ALex

Thanks for the reply Alex.

I didn't have the Houdini bin directory in my path - however, adding it didn't seem to help. I have confirmed that I have the right path, because if I run a windows cmd shell, and type ‘i3dgen<return>’ from my win2k root directory, it finds i3dgen.

That being said, I did find something a little odd - if I hard-code the path to my output i3d file, it seems to work: i.e. coutput.i3d will work, but $HIP/output.i3d will not. c$F3.i3d works too, but not $HIP/output.i3d.

Seems like the $HIP variable is causing problems on Win2k.

Try setting all of these system variables
(change paths according to your Houdini installation)

H CHoudini5.5.151
HB CHoudini5.5.151/bin
HFS CHoudini5.5.151
HH CHoudini5.5.151/houdini
HHC CHoudini5.5.151/houdini/config
HIH %HOME%/houdini5.5
HIS CHoudini5.5.151/houdini
HOME C“whereever your HOME directory is”

oh, instead of $HIP, use $JOB instead. We used to use $HIP prior to v5.
In your enviornment variable, set a default project directory to your $JOB.

Of course, you can still set those variable in your Houdini's “Alias/Variable” window as well.

Hope that help.

Fantastic - thanks all. This is a helpful forum.