Hi, We're doing some Houdini Engine testing, but have run into a showstopper. We simply can't load any .hda in Houdini Engine for maya. Here's the error message (the file path is an example as we can't reveal current projects):

// Error: Could not load OTL file: /home/shortcut/Desktop/houdini_asset.hda //

I would think it has something to do with these other error messages:

// Error: Failed to automatically start Houdini Engine server using named pipe. //
// Houdini Engine failed to initialize.

We're using Houdini Engine version 17.0.352 on Maya 2018 for Linux.

Best Regards, Asger Mortensen.

Which Linux? I've seen this happen on older versions of Ubuntu, although it works for me on 18.04. (looks like a semaphore related bug)

Starting in 17.0, the houdiniEngine server is required to run out of process. Ideally it should autostart with the default settings,
But for the moment, you can start up the HARS server manually, and then set your preferencest to Named Pipe/Manual server and reload the plugin.

e.g. it you're using the deafault pipe name “hapi” with the manual server option, the you can do:
HARS -n hapi
to start the server.

If you want to set the optionVars before loading the plugin

optionVar -iv “houdiniEngineSessionType” 2;
optionVar -iv “houdiniEngineSessionPipeCustom” 1;
optionVar -sv “houdiniEngineThriftPipe” “hapi”;

I had exactly the same issue and it worked for me.

Thanks