Forums Technical Discussion Houdini won't load .OBJ files

Houdini won't load .OBJ files

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AdamuKv
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Btw, I still haven't managed to fix this, but now, in the newer builds, I can actually see the error:


Same error for every .obj file I have.

@ndickson HALP!
Edited by AdamuKv - Feb. 9, 2018 11:41:37

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neil_math_comp
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Another possible workaround, (though it probably won't work given the past results) :

  1. Put down a Unix SOP
  2. Set the command line to gwavefront the_path_to_the_OBJ_file_in_question.obj stdout.bgeo
  3. Set the display flag to it (if it wasn't already there.)
Writing code for fun and profit since... 2005? Wow, I'm getting old.
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neil_math_comp
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Oh, another developer suggested asking if you have any anti-virus software. Some anti-virus software does a bunch of unusual stuff with blocking seemingly-arbitrary processes from spawning seemingly-arbitrary other processes.

I've even seen one delete a few files from a Houdini install before, and then delete them off a USB key when I tried to copy the missing files over myself. It didn't make any backup, either, so it had no way to restore them. I just uninstalled the anti-virus at that point, because it was acting more like a virus. I think it was Norton.
Edited by neil_math_comp - Feb. 9, 2018 12:53:42
Writing code for fun and profit since... 2005? Wow, I'm getting old.
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AdamuKv
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ndickson
Another possible workaround, (though it probably won't work given the past results) :

  1. Put down a Unix SOP
  2. Set the command line to gwavefront the_path_to_the_OBJ_file_in_question.obj stdout.bgeo
  3. Set the display flag to it (if it wasn't already there.)

Of course it doesn't

Regarding anti-virus, I have Malwarebytes anti-malware, when I installed Houdini and when I work with it - Malwarebytes is not running, it isn't on autostart at all. Checked all of it's reports, nothing found - nothing quarantined.

I only have problem with .OBJ, all others work as expected. And its the same goddamn error - “Expected array object” in some library… Backend IO - I presume something within the Houdini files or settings…

It is really frustrating and I know reinstalling Win10 will probably fix it but I really don't want to do that.

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AdamuKv
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New clue!

I have created a default torus, saved it as .bgeo and tried to use gwavefront to create an .obj. It cannot read files at all! But, when I right-clicked at torus SOP and save it as torus.obj - it works and that .obj loads successfully.
But as before the code in that .obj is tottaly different than in any other I have:

Houdini .obj:
PGEOMETRY V5
NPoints 288 NPrims 288
NPointGroups 0 NPrimGroups 0
NPointAttrib 0 NVertexAttrib 0 NPrimAttrib 0 NAttrib 0
0.75 -2.18556941e-08 -5.84121551e-07 1
0.724444211 -2.18556941e-08 -0.194114819 1
0.649518847 -2.18556941e-08 -0.375000447 1
0.530329764 -2.18556941e-08 -0.53033042 1
...

Standard .obj:
mtllib pine.mtl
o tree
# Position
v -2.20836377144 -4.8485330808e-006 -1.27499949932
v -2.15145754814 -8.18150328996e-006 -2.15145754814
v -1.40249943733 -9.23769675865e-006 -2.42920041084
v -0.566651940346 -8.04200226412e-006 -2.11477351189
...

Can you try above and see if there is a difference between Houdini .obj and any other?

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neil_math_comp
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AdamuKv
as before the code in that .obj is tottaly different than in any other I have
gwavefront is also used to save .obj files, so it looks like it's just failing to spawn gwavefront to save the file, and it's instead falling back to saving an old-format .geo file that happens to have the extension obj. Houdini normally saves and loads valid .obj files.

I have no idea why Houdini (or gconvert) isn't spawning gwavefront on your machine, sorry.
Writing code for fun and profit since... 2005? Wow, I'm getting old.
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AdamuKv
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Ok, opened a shell window via Houdini (cmd) and tried gwavefront to convert to and from .obj/.bgeo - it works without issues… So I'm guessing main program has some issues calling external apps.
Houdini won't load .obj derived this way (source .obj -> .bgeo -> .obj), but I can load the .bgeo, which will suffice for now.
It's still not fixed and I would like to know at least why it isn't working.

This is the converted .obj, which now looks ok:

# File exported by Houdini 16.5.323 (www.sidefx.com)
# 8911 points
# 30066 vertices
# 10022 primitives
# Bounds: [-165.950775, -15.8894215, -177.267975] to [150.687927, 326.117096, 124.150085]
g 
v -8.09147644 -6.00000021e-06 -1.60949504
v -8.33779907 -9.99999975e-06 -2.52924299
...

Thanks again ndickson for your time!
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Sskar
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I just went through a round of having the same issues. Weirdly, in a last ditch effort, I ended up solving it by moving my installation to the C drive. Once I did that everything worked fine and houdini was spitting out properly formatted .objs via the file sop. I double-checked by installing back to a different drive and the problem returned with .objs being a different format that normal. I'm glad all is working fine now, but I'm still not sure where/why the difference exactly happens though.
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tamlin
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As moving Houdini to the C drive fixed this for one user, I _strongly_ suggest using Winternals ProcMon (available from microsoft.com).

Set it to look at filesystem, registry and process start activity.

It will spew a TON of completely unrelated stuff. You need to create filters to remove that from the sampling/logging.

But once the filters are in place, you should be able to get a pretty good idea of what Houdini and/or any of its child processes are doing, what is failing, and hopefully also figure out why it's failing.

++luck;
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neil_math_comp
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If you find anything interesting from Process Monitor, please post it submit a bug report. That could be quite helpful.

Edit: Whoops! It didn't occur to me that it might (or might not) pose a privacy/security risk to you to post Process Monitor data, so it's probably safest not to directly post a file on a public forum.
Edited by neil_math_comp - June 5, 2018 13:22:24
Writing code for fun and profit since... 2005? Wow, I'm getting old.
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_HFmdvpe9U2G3OMNViKMEQ [www.youtube.com]
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