Whenever I play an animation (either within the interface or in mplay), I get random pauses that last about a second. I checked the Task Manager; and when these pauses occur, hmaster.exe goes down to 0% CPU and sesinedt.exe spikes up.

Is there anyway to prevent this during playback?

By the way, this machine is not connected to the Internet – not sure if that could be a cause.

Can I safely assume the problem's something specific to my computer system?

Is there any reason why the license server would spike during playback?

Not sure. Try the 9.5 beta. If there's a problem in 9.5 as well, then post to the H9.5 beta forum with specific steps to reproduce.

I've been noticing an intermittent and very annoying lag lately, and it seems to have to do with my internet connection. My WiFi connection has been very spotty recently, and I notice the lag in Houdini seems to happen when the connection to my router goes out. I've got the Apprentice HD license installed.

Does Houdini still need to access the internet once you've got the license installed?

Houdini does not need to access the Internet, but it uses TCP/IP for sending messages from houdini to hserver to sesinetd on the same machine. It may involve connecting to a DNS server to get the IP addres of the computer. See the posts at the end of this thread [sidefx.com], for example.

However, since you are using only Apprentice HD licenses, you can configure Houdini to use local licensing, which does not use TCP/IP communication for licensing. See this for details: http://www.sidefx.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1283&Itemid=273 [sidefx.com]

Thanks for the info Rafal.

~M