Welcome to the world of SGI, and one of the major reasons we won't touch them in 3D ever again. They charge you a fortune, screw you on support costs(one of their major profit centres), and have an attitude to match. Grrr…
I understand your scenario - you were able to get a cast-off for little or no money, but now to get it to run, you have to jump through hoops. We had the same problem with their 320 Intel series - it became so much of a headache and a costly one at that, that we simply scrapped the damn thing…and gave it to someone like yourself who's also cursing it.
You may be able to find a kind soul that would let you borrow their upgrade disks, but you didn't hear that from me.
There's a few SGI users floating around here that might have a workaround, but I suspect the upgrade is the way to go…
Cheers,
J.C.
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Technical Discussion » Irix 6.3 to .6.5 wat a nightmare help
- JColdrick
- 4140 posts
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Technical Discussion » Roto in camera view is broken in 5.5.36
- JColdrick
- 4140 posts
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That's correct - do any animation in the SOP network - you need to use deformation blur. Velocity blur is really just a hack to allow you to mblur particles more accurately - this doesn't necessarily emulate all types of mblur in a more accurate fashion. They all have their uses.
Don't be so hard on mantra, David - you're just going through what anyone goes through when learning a new package…we've all been there. Mblur works fine.
And yup - that sounds like prman isn't in your path…they are indeed very well integrated and we've been using them together for years now. Just sounds like a config issue…
Cheers,
J.C.
Don't be so hard on mantra, David - you're just going through what anyone goes through when learning a new package…we've all been there. Mblur works fine.
And yup - that sounds like prman isn't in your path…they are indeed very well integrated and we've been using them together for years now. Just sounds like a config issue…
Cheers,
J.C.
Technical Discussion » Roto in camera view is broken in 5.5.36
- JColdrick
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Ahh, understood…the ol' leading zero issue.
SESI makes a new build daily… so you can see where that final number can easily rise above 100 - thus the method you mention(<100=beta) wouldn't work terribly well for them.
But yup - now I see what confused things…most importantly the latest build should have solved your problem…
Cheers,
J.C.
SESI makes a new build daily… so you can see where that final number can easily rise above 100 - thus the method you mention(<100=beta) wouldn't work terribly well for them.
But yup - now I see what confused things…most importantly the latest build should have solved your problem…
Cheers,
J.C.
Technical Discussion » Roto in camera view is broken in 5.5.36
- JColdrick
- 4140 posts
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On SESI FTP the latest production version is 5.5.305. The installed Houdini on my station ( I did not install it) is 5.5.36. So to me I have the latest 5.5 build.
I think you're mis-reading the version numbers. You take each number, separated by a period, and simply compare them. You don't evaluate each “place” as a token i.e. 36 is higher than 305 as if you put a period after the 3 like “3.05”. It's “three hundred and five”, which is higher than “thirty five”. This is quite standard for versioning - just use the dots as they are and don't insert any additional ones. 5.5.305 will solve your problem…
Cheers,
J.C.
Technical Discussion » Problem installing 6.0 under linux
- JColdrick
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Oh, yikes - I'm not a SUSE guy so I'll back out …but hopefully someone else here is. I suspect the problem is related to SUSE having a different setup than Redhat(your comment on the /etc/initd directory verifies that). The licensing tools likely aren't being installed properly. That doesn't mean it can't work, necessarily, it just means you'll need to hack around that. I think.
Any SUSE users out there?
Cheers,
J.C.
Any SUSE users out there?
Cheers,
J.C.
Technical Discussion » Problem installing 6.0 under linux
- JColdrick
- 4140 posts
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Hmmm…
First off, verify whether or not sesinetd is running - type in:
ps -e | grep sesi
You should see several sesinetd proceses. If not, then, as root:
cd /etc/rc.d/init.d
./sesinetd start
Now the license server should be running. You should be able to run hkey(after sourcing the houdini_setup file), and your sesictrl commands should work(although they will show you that there's no licenses available - and you shouldn't expect sesictrl to be in your path - it's in /usr/lib/sesi. hkey is recommended!).
Now, you're on your own with the apprentice licensing - I'm not sure about that - but at least this will get your license daemon running. SESI should be able to help you with the rest.
Cheers,
J.C.
First off, verify whether or not sesinetd is running - type in:
ps -e | grep sesi
You should see several sesinetd proceses. If not, then, as root:
cd /etc/rc.d/init.d
./sesinetd start
Now the license server should be running. You should be able to run hkey(after sourcing the houdini_setup file), and your sesictrl commands should work(although they will show you that there's no licenses available - and you shouldn't expect sesictrl to be in your path - it's in /usr/lib/sesi. hkey is recommended!).
Now, you're on your own with the apprentice licensing - I'm not sure about that - but at least this will get your license daemon running. SESI should be able to help you with the rest.
Cheers,
J.C.
Technical Discussion » [Q}HDRI iamge in Renderman/Houdini
- JColdrick
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I'm not sure specifically what you want to do(although I assume “fiddle with it” ), but there isn't much with regard to Houdini that you need to do assuming you want to render some geometry using renderman with HDR. All the magic is in the HDR maps and the prman shader. There's support in recent versions of prman for this format/approach - check out the in the help for prman 11. As far as Houdini - it's mostly just pointing to your shader.
Another thing to keep your eye on over the next several months is the new OpenEXR format from ILM - it works at 16 instead of 32 bit, but is very clever and ILM uses it heavily in production. It's not useful right now except for app developers, but I'm hoping it catches on since OEXR images are significantly smaller than HDR…
Cheers,
J.C.
Another thing to keep your eye on over the next several months is the new OpenEXR format from ILM - it works at 16 instead of 32 bit, but is very clever and ILM uses it heavily in production. It's not useful right now except for app developers, but I'm hoping it catches on since OEXR images are significantly smaller than HDR…
Cheers,
J.C.
Technical Discussion » 5.5.208 linux issues....only start screen is showing!!
- JColdrick
- 4140 posts
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Someone who has your config may be able to give you a more precise answer, but you're not running a SESI-certified system:
http://www.sidefx.com/support/system/index.html [sidefx.com]
It doesn't matter that Windows with the same hardware works - it's all about the drivers. It's rare to have a Mesa-powered card on Linux work well…or at all.
Cheers,
J.C.
http://www.sidefx.com/support/system/index.html [sidefx.com]
It doesn't matter that Windows with the same hardware works - it's all about the drivers. It's rare to have a Mesa-powered card on Linux work well…or at all.
Cheers,
J.C.
Technical Discussion » File Corruption
- JColdrick
- 4140 posts
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Just a couple of comments - the FUSE message you got isn't related to the Fuse SOP, I believe - I think it's a standard message that comes up when there's a crash. I believe FUSE used to be an internal code name for one of the uber-nets in Houdini. All I know is I have seen this many times and I've never used the Fuse SOP.
I don't know if apprentice comes with these commands, but using hdecompress will expand a hip file to it's component parts, a file heirarchy just like a project. You can peruse things, and use hcompress to rebuild it afterwards. I apologize for being thick on this since I'm not familiar with the Apprentice version at all…
What method are you using for saving? If you haven't changed it, it's probably “Override Filename” - this copies your current file into a subdir and writes out your session over top of the original. I've always been opposed to this method - it's unecessarily disk intensive and potentially prone to corruption. There's no documented evidence of this ever causing a corrupt file, but it's possible in my books. What about recent saves? Do you have a slightly older version that works? Compare file sizes. If you have no saved files other than your corrupted one, then you have just learned Lesson Number One in computer animation - save, and save OFTEN. It's a pain now, but you'll look back upon it as a valuable lesson learned. When I'm working on a shot, I have saved versions in the hundreds - nothing is more important than the time you've spent on a job!
Cheers,
J.C.
I don't know if apprentice comes with these commands, but using hdecompress will expand a hip file to it's component parts, a file heirarchy just like a project. You can peruse things, and use hcompress to rebuild it afterwards. I apologize for being thick on this since I'm not familiar with the Apprentice version at all…
What method are you using for saving? If you haven't changed it, it's probably “Override Filename” - this copies your current file into a subdir and writes out your session over top of the original. I've always been opposed to this method - it's unecessarily disk intensive and potentially prone to corruption. There's no documented evidence of this ever causing a corrupt file, but it's possible in my books. What about recent saves? Do you have a slightly older version that works? Compare file sizes. If you have no saved files other than your corrupted one, then you have just learned Lesson Number One in computer animation - save, and save OFTEN. It's a pain now, but you'll look back upon it as a valuable lesson learned. When I'm working on a shot, I have saved versions in the hundreds - nothing is more important than the time you've spent on a job!
Cheers,
J.C.
Technical Discussion » Non-listed PRMAN compliant renderers with Select
- JColdrick
- 4140 posts
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Well, it wouldn't necessarily work - it might, but bits might be broken. That's why the ROP has options for prman, renderdotc, entropy…despite the fact that RIB is a standard - well, there's always variations that happen with every implementation. Even prman strays significantly from the prman spec - they've added extra things that aren't in the spec, but they try to adhere to the spec at a minimum so that proper RIB won't break, per se. However, you'll be giving up certain things. With these other RIBs, there will be certain things broken. Just to give you an example - when Entropy came out - using prman RIB broke it. The reason? The Renderman spec says you *must* declare the types of params when you call a shader. For years, Pixar relaxed this and their interpretor would let you say:
Surface “SuperPlas” “Ka”
and it wouldn't break - it would pass the value to the renderer and let it decide at shader evaluation time whether the value fit the type. Houdini, understandbly, did this because it made for smaller RIBs. Feed this to Entropy, and it puked everywhere. They followed the spec more rigidly, and required:
Surface “SuperPlas” “uniform float Ka”
To Entropy, the prman RIB was nothing less than a messy syntax error.
This is why there's not just one “RIB” output. There's also lots of kewl GI/raytracing stuff associated with the latest prman release that you can't take advantage of unless you toggle on the V11 version, or hand edit the RIB…
Cheers,
J.C.
Surface “SuperPlas” “Ka”
and it wouldn't break - it would pass the value to the renderer and let it decide at shader evaluation time whether the value fit the type. Houdini, understandbly, did this because it made for smaller RIBs. Feed this to Entropy, and it puked everywhere. They followed the spec more rigidly, and required:
Surface “SuperPlas” “uniform float Ka”
To Entropy, the prman RIB was nothing less than a messy syntax error.
This is why there's not just one “RIB” output. There's also lots of kewl GI/raytracing stuff associated with the latest prman release that you can't take advantage of unless you toggle on the V11 version, or hand edit the RIB…
Cheers,
J.C.
Technical Discussion » OT: Linux help
- JColdrick
- 4140 posts
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Well, if your floppy controller is flakey - that certainly limits your options. In short, I would get something like PartitionMagic that comes with BootManager - this essentially gets installed to the MBR and controls what will boot - it will automatically detect a proper /boot directory for Linux and let you boot from there, or optionally windows. Also, I know people that have just gone ahead and installed Redhat Grub bootloader to the MBR - and it lets you boot either Windows or Linux - but I personally can't recommend this since I haven't done it myself…it's risky since if it *doesn't* work, for one reason or another, you've lost Windows. BootManager is a little smarter and warns you if there's something not set up correctly before it installs…
Cheers,
J.C.
Cheers,
J.C.
Technical Discussion » Houdini 5.5.208 on RedHat 7.3
- JColdrick
- 4140 posts
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We're running the same thing here, and it works fine. I suspect the fault lies in you script - you could either post the script as Edward suggest, or just be sure to cd /usr/hfs5.5 and
source houdini_setup
and it will work…
If you need to do something more than that, perhaps you could tell us what you're trying to do and there should be a solution…
Cheers,
J.C.
source houdini_setup
and it will work…
If you need to do something more than that, perhaps you could tell us what you're trying to do and there should be a solution…
Cheers,
J.C.
Technical Discussion » OP channel and variable names for expressions
- JColdrick
- 4140 posts
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Also, for the docs, check out the “Expression Language” pdf and look at Chapter 5 - Channel/Operator Expression Functions. This is the repository for all this stuff.
However, they've added a lot of nice drag n' drop things like what Michael suggested that makes common operations faster than digging thru docs for syntax stuff…
Cheers,
J.C.
However, they've added a lot of nice drag n' drop things like what Michael suggested that makes common operations faster than digging thru docs for syntax stuff…
Cheers,
J.C.
Technical Discussion » channel editor crashes
- JColdrick
- 4140 posts
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I can second that here - we're using Linux RH7.3 with Houdini 5.5.208, and one of our animators has been doing extensive animations with the channel editor open with nary a crash. I'm guessing - but you running Windows? It may be a windows/graphics issue…
Report it to SESI with all your OS/graphics card info, since I haven't noticed any mention of a fix for something like this in the journal…
Cheers,
J.C.
Report it to SESI with all your OS/graphics card info, since I haven't noticed any mention of a fix for something like this in the journal…
Cheers,
J.C.
Technical Discussion » Non-listed PRMAN compliant renderers with Select
- JColdrick
- 4140 posts
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I may be wrong, but I thought Select didn't have RIB capability…possibly a piece of geometry snippet but that's a far call from actually being able to use with a RIB renderer per se. There's *lots* of other stuff that's needed that Houdini Master can output with Rman ROPs.
As far as what renderers work - Master works well with all versions of prman, RenderDotC, and Entropy - plus you can hack it to work with BMRT fairly readily.
I wouldn't go down the road of trying to do RIB renders with only geo snippets(if you can even make those in Select). Way too much hassle…I'd either use mantra or pay for Houdini Master(or whatever else can generate RIB - I've lost track ).
Cheers,
J.C.
As far as what renderers work - Master works well with all versions of prman, RenderDotC, and Entropy - plus you can hack it to work with BMRT fairly readily.
I wouldn't go down the road of trying to do RIB renders with only geo snippets(if you can even make those in Select). Way too much hassle…I'd either use mantra or pay for Houdini Master(or whatever else can generate RIB - I've lost track ).
Cheers,
J.C.
Technical Discussion » output compositing
- JColdrick
- 4140 posts
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Unless you've got a version with an extremely serious bug in it(unlikely), that's not the problem - I can start from any frame in the example you give and get the correct stuff. For instance, I have a sequence that starts at frame 10, and I output 9-20, and I get one black frame, followed by the first 10 frames of my sequence. I'm running 5.5.208, although as I say I'd be really surprised if such a serious bug got into a point release. Always possible, though!
Apart from incorrect names in the “Output PIcture” field or the possibility that you fiddled with the offsets and timing tools in COPs(stuff I'm not personally fond of - like having FPS assigned on the fly to sequences - which is simply incorrect IMHO), perhaps you should try 5.5.208?
Oh, and of course it's possible it's platform-related - you don't mention your platform, but I'm running Linux…
Cheers,
J.C.
Apart from incorrect names in the “Output PIcture” field or the possibility that you fiddled with the offsets and timing tools in COPs(stuff I'm not personally fond of - like having FPS assigned on the fly to sequences - which is simply incorrect IMHO), perhaps you should try 5.5.208?
Oh, and of course it's possible it's platform-related - you don't mention your platform, but I'm running Linux…
Cheers,
J.C.
Technical Discussion » output compositing
- JColdrick
- 4140 posts
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If you've selected the correct network, then it's not the COP/TOP/MAT problem - since a Composite V2 can't see a Composite V1. However, Calosus is correct, there's insufficent information to determine your problem. Try problem solving. Make a simple, new network with only a ramp. Output a sequence of that. If you still get black, then you're either doing something fundamentally wrong, or you've got a serious misconfiguration of the software(which is unlikely). At least that rules this out.
Have you checked permissions to where you're trying to write? I'm not sure what OS you're on. What specifically do you have entered in your “Output Picture” field in your output driver?
It's useful to give as much info as possible when looking for help. This is overkill, and not really our field, but I've found it's a good guide to live by:
http://www.tuxedo.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html [tuxedo.org]
Cheers,
J.C.
Have you checked permissions to where you're trying to write? I'm not sure what OS you're on. What specifically do you have entered in your “Output Picture” field in your output driver?
It's useful to give as much info as possible when looking for help. This is overkill, and not really our field, but I've found it's a good guide to live by:
http://www.tuxedo.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html [tuxedo.org]
Cheers,
J.C.
Houdini Lounge » Question for the developers: FBX Support?
- JColdrick
- 4140 posts
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Standards are a great idea, but as always with this there's problems. It's disappointing that they're charging companies for the software kit *and* licensing - it would smell better as open-source. I've also noticed that A/W isn't in their list of partners, so the plugin they offer(is it free?) must have been done by them or associates because they couldn't convince A/W to cough up money and they're the biggest platform right now. Then of course, there's the biggest problem - acceptance by the community. This is the toughest challenge. Part of the problem of a (self described) “generic” file format is that you force the application developer to water down their packages capabilities when transferring your data. Nothing would be more applicable in this context as Houdini - you're going to be surrendering all the true procedural capabilities. I'm sure this is true, to varying extents, in all the packages.
I know I'm being ultra-negative here - sorry about that, but I need a coffee… It's just that I've seen standards come and go - it's a stunningly difficult concept to sell because absolutely everyone has a “better” way to butter a bagel, and trying to force them to funnel their capabilities into a new format is an expensive proposition for them to implement, with a debatable return on investment. There are already methods out there that have been developed to transfer that are more tailored to the specifics of various packages. Even nowadays, all the major packages scramble and struggle when importing/exporting - you still see obj, dxf, IGES, tiff, rla, etc. being used the most - and how old are those formats? There's a reason - unlike MIDI for music, no-one is agreeing to sit down at a big table and come to an agreement. It will never happen, and something that costs them money *on top of* the cost to develop will only happen if there's enough demand - the old chicken and egg again.
After all that dissing and bitching - I'd *love* there to be a better, more accepted format that could encapsulate more than simply data, or simply animation - but I would prefer an opensource project that involved individuals at all the various 3d companies throwing monkey wrenchs at it - hammer it out and make it something that everyone could contribute to. I think it could be a real success story, but it needs an evangelist…
Cheers,
J.C.
I know I'm being ultra-negative here - sorry about that, but I need a coffee… It's just that I've seen standards come and go - it's a stunningly difficult concept to sell because absolutely everyone has a “better” way to butter a bagel, and trying to force them to funnel their capabilities into a new format is an expensive proposition for them to implement, with a debatable return on investment. There are already methods out there that have been developed to transfer that are more tailored to the specifics of various packages. Even nowadays, all the major packages scramble and struggle when importing/exporting - you still see obj, dxf, IGES, tiff, rla, etc. being used the most - and how old are those formats? There's a reason - unlike MIDI for music, no-one is agreeing to sit down at a big table and come to an agreement. It will never happen, and something that costs them money *on top of* the cost to develop will only happen if there's enough demand - the old chicken and egg again.
After all that dissing and bitching - I'd *love* there to be a better, more accepted format that could encapsulate more than simply data, or simply animation - but I would prefer an opensource project that involved individuals at all the various 3d companies throwing monkey wrenchs at it - hammer it out and make it something that everyone could contribute to. I think it could be a real success story, but it needs an evangelist…
Cheers,
J.C.
Technical Discussion » Linux/Houdini problems
- JColdrick
- 4140 posts
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Ahh, I see. If you still have troubles, try editing that houdini_setup file to comment out that “initialized” echo - sometimes shells will lock out when something's being writted to stdout and it's not available(which is what happens when you “click” on a script using a GUI). I've bitched about that script but it seems some people like the feedback. Go figure. Otherwise, setting that stuff up in your .cshrc can only help. I can make this script:
#!/bin/csh -f
cd /hfs
source houdini_setup
houdini
and it successfully starts houdini. It doesn't seem all that much different than your original post.
WM, eh? There's a growing undercurrent of users that are using the nofrills approach like this lately. Actually, should I choose, I can make KDE or Gnome pretty damned clean - but there's no question you're minimizing your overhead that way.
Nope, you're not missing out on anything by not using Gnome - it's all very personal.
The maximize problem may be related to Houdini config stuff. I'm running RH7.3 and KDE - just like you, and I don't have the problem. Odd!
Cheers,
J.C.
#!/bin/csh -f
cd /hfs
source houdini_setup
houdini
and it successfully starts houdini. It doesn't seem all that much different than your original post.
WM, eh? There's a growing undercurrent of users that are using the nofrills approach like this lately. Actually, should I choose, I can make KDE or Gnome pretty damned clean - but there's no question you're minimizing your overhead that way.
Nope, you're not missing out on anything by not using Gnome - it's all very personal.
The maximize problem may be related to Houdini config stuff. I'm running RH7.3 and KDE - just like you, and I don't have the problem. Odd!
Cheers,
J.C.
Technical Discussion » Linux/Houdini problems
- JColdrick
- 4140 posts
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Dante is right about your scripts. What is probably simpler is to ask: what exactly do you want to do? I can understand if it's simply that you don't want to type:
cd /hfs;source houdini_setup;houdini
everytime you want to start houdini. All I do is type:
ho
The way to do that us to have the following in your .cshrc file(home dir):
if ( ! $?HFS ) then
cd /hfs
source houdini_setup
endif
alias ho ‘houdini’
Note this assumes you're running csh, and also I always have a link /hfs linked to the distro directory - you can change that above to wherever Houdini is. Note that it's sometimes evil for shells to output text, like houdini_setup, so I always edit out the line “Houdini is now initialized” - that plays havoc with a number of utilities we run here. I know it seems weird why that works and yours does not, but welcome to the bizarre world of the shell. There's lots of annoying things which actually have some logic behind them. In this case - every single shell that is spawned has the important links setup automatically(and after I edit houdini_setup - silently).
The maximize problem sounds like Gnome - what are you running for an OS - Redhat 7.x? I've found that Gnome always insists on leaving that gap - supposedly so you can easily access the toolbar. Sigh. I'm running KDE with no such problem. If you decide to go this route, be sure you're using KDE3 - previous versions sucked…
Installing Houdini Linux - I never install over top of a previous release - I always install to a unique directory each time, then link /hfs to that(or /usr/hfs for that matter). Linking is your friend - use it liberally. That way, if I ever need to pop back to an older release, I just re-link /hfs to the older one and *boom* I'm back where I need to be.
Hope this was useful…
J.C.
cd /hfs;source houdini_setup;houdini
everytime you want to start houdini. All I do is type:
ho
The way to do that us to have the following in your .cshrc file(home dir):
if ( ! $?HFS ) then
cd /hfs
source houdini_setup
endif
alias ho ‘houdini’
Note this assumes you're running csh, and also I always have a link /hfs linked to the distro directory - you can change that above to wherever Houdini is. Note that it's sometimes evil for shells to output text, like houdini_setup, so I always edit out the line “Houdini is now initialized” - that plays havoc with a number of utilities we run here. I know it seems weird why that works and yours does not, but welcome to the bizarre world of the shell. There's lots of annoying things which actually have some logic behind them. In this case - every single shell that is spawned has the important links setup automatically(and after I edit houdini_setup - silently).
The maximize problem sounds like Gnome - what are you running for an OS - Redhat 7.x? I've found that Gnome always insists on leaving that gap - supposedly so you can easily access the toolbar. Sigh. I'm running KDE with no such problem. If you decide to go this route, be sure you're using KDE3 - previous versions sucked…
Installing Houdini Linux - I never install over top of a previous release - I always install to a unique directory each time, then link /hfs to that(or /usr/hfs for that matter). Linking is your friend - use it liberally. That way, if I ever need to pop back to an older release, I just re-link /hfs to the older one and *boom* I'm back where I need to be.
Hope this was useful…
J.C.
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