Has anyone experienced difficulties with using Houdini in a multiple monitor setup. I am able to drag panes over to the other areas and they are visible, but interactivity stops. I'm not attempting to even drag a viewport over, just possibly the parameters or network which would be simple 2d rendering I would think. I have a geforce4ti 4200 128mb vga+dvi out and haven't had issues with any prog other than houdini.

Thanks in advance,

dave

I'm using Houdini on a dual monitor setup, and it's working very well, which OS are you working on ? Windows or Linux ? Usually it works better on Linux because of twinview

Houdini uses OpenGl to render the Nodes thats why you can zoom in on them and thats why they can have a uniform UI exactly from OS to OS. There is no 2D in Houdini except on the file textures you apply.

Cheers,
Nate Nesler

Hi Dave,

Have you looked at this thread?

http://www.sidefx.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=710 [sidefx.com]

Cheers!
steven

Sorry getting back to everyone so late, but i've been trying all sorts of things with, unfortunately, no luck…

to answer somethings back:

I am running on a windows box running xp and using nvidia detonator drivers 44.03 (with nView disabled..just using xp's multimonitor setup). Since I now know that houdini uses opengl to render everything (which makes obvious sense), i went through all my opengl options (which are limited on the consumer cards) and tried all sorts of combinations with out any luck. I went to that thread posted and tried various environment variables with no luck. Although that thread fixed another problem I was having with the near clipping plane in the display options and that helped so much. Thank god that one's finally taken care of. The display smooth lines option doesn't really affect my performance either way, so i don't think that has much to do with it.

The odd thing that is going on is that the panes on the secondary monitor still have interactivity, but it is like as if it is not refreshing the window to display the change. But it will change what I have on the primary monitor. i.e. i use the value grid or even type in a new value to change the scale of something on the parameters on the secondary mon., I see the scale change of my object in the viewport on my primary mon. Also if i keep open a par. pane on my primary as well as secondary and try to change a value on the secondary, it will only reflect in the primary par pane. Only if i drag the pane back off the secondary and on to the primary and click in a box, does it refresh itself. Also, if try to click on a drop down menu or even the file, edit, settings, etc menus on the secondary, the menu popup will show up on the edge of the primary screen. There has only been one other program that does this to me and that is OpenOffice.

So yea, im quite confused but will still keep hacking at it. Thanks so much for the help everyone. Let me know if anything else pops in to your heads. Maybe ‘Edward’ from the other post will see this thread and have some comments since he's dealt with these cards so much.

Thanks everyone,

dave

WAHOO! It works! Sort Of!

Ok, so i changed an environment variable from HOUDINI_OGL_HARDWARE (1) to HOUDINI_OGL_SOFTWARE (1) and now most things seem to work. Turning the HOUDINI_OGL_DBL_BUFFER_FIX off (0) made icons redraw and act much smoother than on, so that shall be kept off. Oddly enough, when I turn the draw lines smoothly option in prefs, the redrawing of any pane absolutely dies on occasion. So i keep it on, things are smooth and it runs better. I see lag on the panes is if they are split up into different sections and resize them.

Ok, so it works technically. But i get a HUGE performance loss. Even if i set the HOUDINI_OGL_SOFTWARE to 0, i get terrible performance. I actually have to delete the variable in order to get it back to normal. And this is just if i am working on my primary monitor. No secondary nothing. So it's either i get to use extra monitors at software opengl or use one monitor and get great performance. Of course I will go with the performance but i feel theres gotta be a way to do this two monitor deal.

Thanks again everyone. Any further thoughts are great..

dave