I was browsing through the local help that is installed as I'm just learning Houdini and found that, at least on my Mac, I would start digging down the links to specific topics and a page would load, (I'd see it for an instant) and then it would just go blank. Restarting Houdini does not seem to have an effect.

I know the obvious fix is use the online docs but it would be nice if the local would work correctly because they load significantly faster.

I noticed too that this happens inside the Houdini Help Browser. If I take the same local URL and place it inside Safari for example, everything loads fine, so I suspect it is a bug in the built in Houdini browser.

Yeah, even on windows help is flaky. It seems to be some kind of port communication error.

On my side too. Win7, Houdini 16.0.504.20.
Any suggestions?

Have you tried with the external browser setting?

In your Houdini.env file add
HOUDINI_EXTERNAL_HELP_BROWSER = 1

Might be a bit of a workaround?

I've had Houdini crash a couple times today as well after clicking on help.

Memory use was low at the time too.

peteski
Have you tried with the external browser setting?

In your Houdini.env file add
HOUDINI_EXTERNAL_HELP_BROWSER = 1

Might be a bit of a workaround?

Cool. Did not know you could do that but then again,….I've been using Houdini for a whopping 2 weeks now so no surprise. It loads fine in Safari. Using your environment variable would be nice given that directed help, ie hitting F1 when you are in a specific context would be nice as it should bring up the page.

I think the issue is with the internal Houdini browser. It obviously has some bugs both OSX and sounds like Windows too.

Thanks for the help. Drinking from the proverbial fire hose at the moment. Coming from Maya and Modo. Interesting program for sure.

Hey no worries
I've always found the external one to be way faster anyway.
Good to hear you are jumping on the Houdini wagon!

Thanks for the external browser token for the .env file. That does work. But I still get Console errors when I click help. This is often a new users first experience with Houdini.

I just wonder how the Dev team looks past this kind of stuff?

Yeah I agree that would be a pretty bad first experience, especially when you are trying to get help

Maybe they should default to using an external browser. Seems a shame to spend time on something that already exists and works great.

I found, at least in my case, that they obviously have set up a mini apache-like web server process. But… it also can hang and simply stopping and restarting Houdini does not fix it. I had to restart my laptop. (If I knew the process I probably could have just killed it in a terminal window). At a minimum I would think that on startup Houdini should just automatically kill and restart the server but apparently it does not do so.

Hi All,

I'm not sure what those communication errors are about or the reported hang but the help going blank problem is a known issue. It's due to a bug in the version of the turbo jpeg library that's packaged in the version of chromium that's packaged in the version of Qt5 that Houdini is built with. So certain help pages with certain jpeg images causes Houdini's help browser to crash. Doesn't happen on all platforms from what I've noticed.

I've found a potential patch from the Qt project that looks promising but still have to roll it into Houdini's Qt and test around.

Workaround for now is to use an external browser for help browsing or use the Houdini Qt4 build.

As for the other issues mentioned in this thread, it's best to submit a bug if you have a reproducible test case. Attaching the Help -> About Houdini details to the bug also helps.

Cheers,
Rob