We've been experiencing this rather frustruting problem too, and it seems to stem from the “Delay Inactive Viewport Redraws” setting.

After disabling that setting (Edit -> Perferences -> 3D Viewports -> Delay Inactive Viewport Redraws) the problem seemed to have gone away on this side.

CheerZ,
Van Aarde.

I have found something interesting regarding this problem. I was experiencing the same issue that I couldn't drag / drop parameters. I discovered that this would happen when the Parameter Interface Editor is above / on top of a Houdini window. If I moved the editor off to the side so that it is on top of the desktop it works fine. Moving back over a Houdini window breaks it again.

Its almost as if Houdini / KDE gets confused about the order of the windows and thinks that I'm dragging parameters onto the Houdini window below instead of onto the Parameter Interface Editor.

Maybe this will help a bit?

CheerZ,
Van Aarde.

My intention was actually to use the loops sequentially (not nested). I would never use the same iterator fo a nested loop! Blasphemy! I'll specify it next time.

Nevertheless. I double posted, here (for Houdini developer input on the pcopen implementation) and on odForce for any other advice .

Okay, back to odForce!

Hi Wolfwood,

Thanks for the reply .

I wasn't saying (or thinking) that theres anything wrong with doing it that way. I was merely trying to find it if there is a more *optimal* way of doing it.
Now, I not familiar with the internal workings of the point cloud functions so this is how I picture it would work:

pcopen() looks up a bunch of points within the specified radius from a given point. These points are stored in memory (??) and an pciterate can be used to iterate over them. Now, to iterate over them a second time, I would have to close the handle, pcopen() again (which does the whole lookup thing again), stores the points in memory and only then I iterate over them again.

All I want to do is iterate over the points without having to do the pcopen lookup again: something like:
pcreset(handle); <– reset the iterator to the beginning of the list.

Unless, of course, if the pcopen/pciterate functions are so super optimal that it is not necessary at all…then I'm okay with it .

Greetings,

I am using an algorithm to process points from a point cloud that requires me to iterate over all the points twice (unfortunately). So, this begs the question: What is the proper way of resetting or restarting a pciterate loop? Do I have to close the handle (pcclose), and reopen the point again or is there some other way to simply loop again without having to pcclose/pcopen again? (To call the pcopen twice seems…unnecessary.)

Regards,
Van Aarde.

Thank you doctor varomix. Your prognosis was spot on!

I thought that commenting out the following line would actually disable Composite:
Option “Composite” “Enable”

But it seems that I had to explicitly disable it:
Option “Composite” “Disable”

Thanks everyone! Now I can get back to making VFX!

–edit–
Thanks for your help as well Pagefan! You replied whilst I was typing this post so I saw your post a bit late!

@arctor: I have an NVidia 8800GT using nvidia drivers version 177.70

@Pagefan: Did you use Houdini on a very recently updated gentoo system?

Like I said, this only happenend when I updated my gentoo about 3 weeks ago. Before that, everything was fine and dandy.

All I can think is that some library or driver implementation changed a bit which is breaking Houdini.

I have been trying to decide whether to post this on the Gentoo or the Houdini forums…and I'm still not sure but here goes!

This was tested with Houdini Apprentice 9.5.170 and 9.5.230 on a 64bit linux operating system (houdini-9.5.170/230 linux 64 bit gcc 4.2 build) in KDE 3.5 running on Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Quad CPU Q9450 @ 2.66GHz with 2GB RAM.

I have recently updated my Gentoo system and everything on my system seems to be working great (Blender, Gimp, Picasa, image viewers, Firefox, Flash etc) except for Houdini.

Problem: Upon opening houdini, I am greeted with the splash screen which dissapears (which is normal) but then I am greeted with this screen after a few more seconds of waiting (attached as snapshot17.png). It looks different depending on what was last in the video frame buffer and the video driver is not the cause of the problem. I rolled it back, tried houdini, updated the driver, tried houdini but to no avail.

Any interaction with the UI takes very long to do anything. Houdini is usually unresponsive for anything from 5-10 seconds when simply highlighting a shelf icon or anything similar. It also takes long to load the panels on the right-hand side of the window when switching between tools (e.g. Camera / select mode). Refer to snapshot18.png.

It is important to note that Houdini starts up maximized. My window manager itself doesn't suffer this lack-of-responsiveness problem. I can easily click on the minimize/maximize buttons whilst Houdini lagging.

When I click the maximize button (whilst Houdini is maximized) to put houdini in non-maximized mode Houdini then works perfect. Going back into maximized mode Houdini is still working good. It's just that first initialization that is causing problems for me.

Has anybody encountered this problem? It's not a total showstopper bug, it's just a mild annoyance to have houdini start up with all that slowness.

Kind Regards,
Van Aarde.