Hello.

I am a new user and coming from a Cinema4D background. I downloaded the Apprentice version to evaluate before plunking down for the HD. I am just a hobbyist.

I have an AMD Opteron 165 and 2GB ram, running windows XP and a nvidia 7600gt card. Issues I have, from a clean XP install mind you, are a lot of crashes and slowness in starting up and starting the mantra.

It seems like this program is communicating with itself as a “local network host” a lot, which is the cause of all the pauses. Is that the case? Is that just because it is a non-commerical version? Is it different with the HD version?

I really want to get into this program but it just seems very unstable. Is 2GB ram not enough, is it just a matter of not enough machine in relation to too much software and I need to upgrade in order for the program to be stable?

This might be a firewall issue, perhaps? Are you using firewall software? If so, temporarily disable it to see if Houdini behaves better.

Cheers,
Jason

I just have windows firewall on. I added the Houdini program to the exceptions list, see if that makes it better. I did try to go the Unbuto route…oh my…coudn't even install Houdini, didn't have priveleges to do so…coudn't figure it out, so I dropped that option.

Thanks for your response.

Well, the program seems to start up more quickly due to making the firewall exception but man, if this program doesn't seem to lock up on everything including really simple stuff. Is there a stability issue with 9.5? Is there some way of getting an older apprentice version so that I can learn the workflow and what everything does, that is more stable?

You can navigate to Support > Download and scroll down the page for the “Archived Builds.” You can try any version from 8 - 9.5.

It still sounds like something else is causing your problems though. 9.5 is very stable for me on both Linux and Windows XP.

Thanks, I will do that and see if an earlier version is more stable. I created a clean disk image with service pack 3 and windows updates…so I ghost back to that every once in awhile. I may redo the “clean” image" again. I have a opteron 165 running at stock 1.8ghz and 2gig of ram and at nividia 7600gt card. I run vue6 and Cinema4d 8 with no problems at all…so I don't know what the deal is. I'll report back on how an earlier version of Houdini works.