I'm getting this error every time I start up houdini: "Magic Bullet Looks did not initialize successfully."
but does houdini even use Magic Bullet Looks?

I tried uninstalling the Red Giant plugins I have installed but it doesnt seem to make a difference

Once I close the dialog box houdini loads up fine, but its a bit of a pain to do that every time!

Houdini 21.0.440 on windows11

That error usually pops up because Houdini is detecting the Red Giant / Maxon plugin hooks on startup even if it doesn’t use Magic Bullet Looks itself. A couple things you can try:

Make sure you’ve fully removed the Red Giant plugins (check both the Program Files\Adobe\Common\Plug-ins and any Documents\houdiniXX.X plugin folders).

Clear your Houdini environment variables (houdini.env) if there’s any reference to Red Giant/Maxon.

Run Maxon App and make sure there are no lingering services trying to load Looks.

If nothing else, a clean uninstall of Maxon/Red Giant and then reinstall Houdini usually clears it.

It won’t hurt Houdini, but cleaning out the leftover plugin hooks should stop the dialog.

Thanks! Clearing out the maxon plugins then giving a reboot helped. Didn't have to reinstall houdini, thankfully.

Is there any cleaner way to do this, another user of the same machine needs those plugins for After Effects, so I can't just remove it.