I'm getting incorrect, delayed or just no normal updates when modelling. either when adding a SOP or switching levels. I have to manually turn settings on and off to make it work.
The viewport is still the weakest part of Houdini. OGL displacement doesn't help with that.

It's really hard to follow a basic tutorial this way. I'm on an I7 with a GTX 970. This should be a compatible system at 2016.

OneBigTree
It's really hard to follow a basic tutorial this way. I'm on an I7 with a GTX 970. This should be a compatible system at 2016.

It's really hard to reproduce this error as you haven't uploaded any file. This should be obvious in 2016.

I have been having this issue a lot lately too, when I perform an operation on normals like compute tangent normals on a curve they will not update until I close the viewer and open a new one

My guess is an nvidia thing, I have a quadro k2200 at home and at work a GTX 980, same issue.

Try downloading the latest daily build and updating your graphics drivers, see if that helps

Artye said:
It's really hard to reproduce this error as you haven't uploaded any file. This should be obvious in 2016.

My quote button doesn't work so I'm using the tags.

You can even see the effect happening in the tutorial video. Not everything is related to a specific scene. In fact a lot if issues are related to the software used and I assume you have a copy?

@drew Parks, I will do that. But anyway, my time windows for learning houdini between projects that pay my rent are very narrow. So if I start doing a tutorial and the first thing before I actually can do it is having to install houdini again, investigate graphics issues, or even write a bug report I never get the tutorial done.

You can even see the effect happening in the tutorial video. Not everything is related to a specific scene. In fact a lot if issues are related to the software used and I assume you have a copy?

There's no need to be snarky. If you were to submit a bug about this, (which, hopefully you will), if you submitted it with no HIP file or set of steps to reproduce the bug, it would probably be marked as “Unable To Reproduce” (UTR) due to not having a scene file or set of steps attached that reproduce the bug. You haven't even mentioned which tutorial; there are hundreds of Houdini tutorials out there. I could try 1,000 different things and never have this happen once, which isn't a productive way for anyone to try to hunt down a bug, so if you have a scene or specific set of steps that reliably reproduce the issue, *please* submit it. Also, you have to make sure to provide the driver version and operating system version you're using, because many of these sorts of issues are due to driver bugs that have to be worked around, though those problems are most common with AMD and Intel graphics drivers, as well as any graphics drivers on Mac.

There is a known bug in our code with vertex normals being one step behind sometimes, but we've only managed to encounter it in the development build of Houdini that hasn't been released yet. That bug may or may not be present in 15.5, and it may or may not affect point normals, since we don't know where the bug is yet, just that it's somewhere between two places in our code.

I'm getting this too, 15.5.504 on Linux 64 bit.

To reproduce (it happens to me constantly) just have some geometry with vertex normals inside a Sop Subnet, do something (Edit SOP say) then jump up out of the subnet.

Toggling different lighting models seems to “correct” it until it happens again.

Cheers,

Peter B

Thanks for a bit more info, Peter. I just tried the following steps on 15.5.518 on Windows 10 with GeForce 940M driver 353.62 and wan't able to repro:

0) Open Houdini.
1) Ctrl+LMB click on the Box shelf tool to place a box.
2) Double-click on object node to dive into SOPs.
3) Check on the “Add Vertex Normals” checkbox in the parameter pane.
4) Using the tab menu in the network editor, put down a Transform SOP.
5) Using the group select button next to the Group field on the Transform SOP, selected primitive 4 (front-right) in the viewport and hit enter.
6) Using the transform handle in the viewport, translated the primitive up and over.
7) Went up to the object level by clicking on “obj” above the network editor.
8) Went back down into SOPs by double-clicking the object node.

Normals were correct the whole time. I also tried from step 4 hitting S in the viewport, selecting the same primitive, hitting tab, typing transform enter, then dragging the handle up and rotating the z-axis rotation handle before going up to the object level and back down. Still no repro. I also tried using the Edit SOP from the network editor and the viewport, although it doesn't seem to have correct handling of vertex normals at all, (I'll bug someone about that or jam it in, myself for the next major version). Either way, no change in normals upon going up and back down, so still no repro. Edit: I just noticed you specifically said a SOP subnet, so I tried that too, using both the Transform SOP and Edit SOP, and no repro for either.

Could you give any more specific steps to repro?

Ehhhhhhhh maybe not? I'll see if I can get it to do something in the file I'm working in and send it to you. I've definitely hit a bunch of viewport funkiness today but what is common about it I can't put my finger on.

Perhaps it's my file or my geometry. Also I'm using 361.42 Nvidia driver (Linux) fwiw.

Cheers,

Peter B

BTW I didn't get an email indicating you'd replied. I trust I don't have to manually subscribe to threads on this new forum? That would suck…

pbowmar
I'll see if I can get it to do something in the file I'm working in and send it to you.

Thanks!

pbowmar
BTW I didn't get an email indicating you'd replied. I trust I don't have to manually subscribe to threads on this new forum? That would suck…

Yeah, I don't think the value of the auto-subscribe setting got transferred over to the new forum. You can set it on the Manage Account page under the user menu on the site. I could ask if there's a way for them to transfer it over for users that had it enabled on the old forum.

See if the attached displays the error:

Error visible on OsX 10.10.5, Gtx 980, H15.523

Artye
See if the attached displays the error:
Error visible on OsX 10.10.5, Gtx 980, H15.523

Thanks! I don't seem to be able to repro it in 15.5.521 on Windows 7, Nvidia Quadro M6000, driver 347.88, but I'll bug other people to try to repro it.

Just to double-check, should we just open the file, unbypass the Edit SOP and then go up to the object level to see the incorrect normals? So far, I've had no luck reproducing on Windows, two people had no luck reproducing on Linux, and another person had no luck reproducing on Mac or Windows.

Yeah - it's not consistent - there must be an order of operations that does it. I’ll post with steps once it’s sorted. Encountered another artefact of stripes, attached, if that helps narrows it until then.

It's all at SOP level. Attached is a screen grab with the Undo list visible after it's happened.