Whenever I attempt to access the Help Sub-Menu “Contents” or “Example Files” I get an instant crash. I have tried re-booting. Any idea how to repair this?

Houdini 16.0.600
Windows 8.1 Professional

I have trouble with the help system too. It crashes so much. I can get maybe one help card of information per Houdini session. And once it has crashed, there is no resetting it unless you exist Houdini and re-open.

All the example files for help are in a folder inside your install.
For windows it is located here:
C:\Program Files\Side Effects Software\Houdini 16.0.589\houdini\help\examples\nodes

Any chance you can post the crash log if Houdini is crashing?

And if Houdini is not crashing (but just the help), is there a stack trace or error message?

Cheers,
Rob

It's not that Houdini is crashing, it is that the Help system is crashing.

From what I can determine, Houdini communicates with the Help system browser via sockets or pipes. Once the help browser crashes, the pipe or socket is left dangling, kind of like a file handle that was not closed correctly. Any future attempts to communicate on that pipe or socket fail.

If the system were more robust, it would try again on another socket channel/pipe. My guess is the current Help system implementation only responds on one channel/pipe. It could listen to sockets over a range of channels. Or when Houdini launches the browser, it could pass the channel it can successfully open to the Help browser that could then acknowledge on that channel. There are tons of way to fix this.

Have either of you tried 16.0.604 or later? Just curious.

Not yet, I am still on 16.0.589. I am in the middle of a Redshift project so I need to complete that before I upgrade Houdini and Redshift to the next best version. It is on my todo list though.

Interesting….ever since around 15.5 I've had trouble with the help system of different sorts…like blank pages and unresponsivenes.

Then with H16, Houdini itself would crash anytime I clicked on help.( with different H16 daily builds and last production build ).

Now with 16.0.600 help works perfectly. Not a problem at all. And I didn't make any changes to my system or OS updates.(8.1)

I just upgraded to H16.0.632 and I see a ton more console messages rolling by than prevously. they look like some kind of errors to me. Sorry, I can't verify the Help system is any better off than before.

The help page did come up and I see Example Links (yeah!)

I have clicked on help for the blendshapes node and was curious as to how it would be used in a crowd simulation. I am trying to blend two agent nodes together, rather than use a switch.

When I load the Formation Crowd Example and examine all the nodes I can't find a single use of the blendshape node in that example.

I'm not sure why it is listed as an example if the node is not really used in the example file..?

Enivob
I'm not sure why it is listed as an example if the node is not really used in the example file..?

… because you don't know about filtering and searching most likely as the node is totally there:

/obj/formationcrowdsexample1/crowdsource/blendshapes1

Enivob
I just upgraded to H16.0.632 and I see a ton more console messages rolling by than prevously. they look like some kind of errors to me. Sorry, I can't verify the Help system is any better off than before.

The help page did come up and I see Example Links (yeah!)

Cool - could be something win7 specific. Can you log a bug for it? Tell us (in the bug) exactly how you're launching the docs, whether or not it happens with all doc links or just certain ones, etc. Give us all the info you can. Thanks!

@Marty: Yep, the green node, found it.

@Chris: There is no real mystery to experiencing the error, just click the help button for Blendshape. Using Windows 7 Ultimate, Service Pack 1. The messages actually scrolls on and on for a minute or so, which is new compared to the last version 16.0.587 which only spit out a few messages.

I don't have time to submit a detailed bug at this moment, I have reported issues to SESI in the past.

However, it would be a nice incentive if you extended a user's license expiration date for every bug that a user finds for you. An extra week for a legitimate bug? Eh? Am I on to something…at next meeting when the boss asks if anyone has any new ideas you could just throw that one out there.

No worries man. When you log the bug, let us know how which versions of houdini you have installed on your machine and whether or not they're qt4 or qt5. We started suppressing these icon related error messages so how you're still seeing them in recent cuts is a bit of a mystery that we can track down when a bug is logged and assigned to someone.
Thanks!