Hi! I am quite new to houdini, and have been messing around with it trying some new things. I wanted to go to import a test model for a destruction simulation (the stanford dragon to be precise), but when I add a geometry node with a file SOP under it, the file gives me a read error that says “Error Unable to read file ”Dxxxxx/xxxxxx/stanford_dragon.obj". I went and downloaded a different model to use, and got the same error. However, when I make something in Cinema 4D, such as a cube or a figure object, it imports just fine. I have tried exporting the dragon from cinema in all file types that cinema can export that houdini can read with no luck. Any ideas on why this is happening? SUPER frustrating.

I think I've opened some of those models before, and Houdini does support the obj file format. A few questions to try to figure this out:

Do you have a HIP file that you could post?

Are you sure that the file path uses forward slashes as in your quote? Houdini's okay with forward slashes, but it doesn't like file paths with backslashes. If you selected the file from Houdini's file chooser, it should probably be okay on that front.

Could it be a file permissions issue? Try running Houdini as Administrator, (right-click, Run as Administrator). Unfortunately, recent Windows versions have introduced a bunch of permissions issues by no longer running programs with Administrator permissions by default, even if your account is an Administrator account.

Oh, and of course, the obvious question that I forgot to ask: Can you post one of the obj files?

Hi, I'm not sure if this will help or you've already tried it but when using Houdini's file chooser, try unchecking the box that says “Show sequences as one entry”.

Rob

ndickson
I think I've opened some of those models before, and Houdini does support the obj file format. A few questions to try to figure this out:

Do you have a HIP file that you could post?

Are you sure that the file path uses forward slashes as in your quote? Houdini's okay with forward slashes, but it doesn't like file paths with backslashes. If you selected the file from Houdini's file chooser, it should probably be okay on that front.

Could it be a file permissions issue? Try running Houdini as Administrator, (right-click, Run as Administrator). Unfortunately, recent Windows versions have introduced a bunch of permissions issues by no longer running programs with Administrator permissions by default, even if your account is an Administrator account.

Yes, they are forward slashes, and no the admin isn't a problem.
Here are the .hip file and the .obj files.

Put your obj file in a path with no apostrophes.

Yeah. A lot of programs don't like paths with single-quotes, double-quotes, back-quotes (a.k.a. back-ticks), commas, semi-colons, asterisks, question marks, vertical pipes, angle brackets, parentheses, or square brackets. I suspect that Houdini doesn't support most of those in filenames, since they often have other meanings in context, though it might support some. Houdini also doesn't support dollar signs or fully support two consecutive underscores, though there may be ways around that.

Some programs on Linux have difficulty with spaces in filenames, though Houdini should be okay with them. On Linux, in concept, you can create filenames containing colons, backslashes, and other characters not generally allowed by Windows, though many Linux programs don't support them, either. The other big thing that always crops up is that filenames are case-insensitive on Windows (and Mac?), but case-sensitive on Linux, so you have to be careful with lowercase and uppercase when dealing with multiple platforms.

Hopefully that solves the mystery!