Hi everyone,

I leave my renders going on over night and come back to find that it has been hanging on a frame. Mantra doesn't crash or anything, it just hangs on a frame (always random, some days could be frame 32 out of 800, other days frame 160 out of 800), not doing anything. I know this could probably be anything, but has anyone had this happen in the past, and what did you do? Also is there some way I can troubleshoot this, a render log I can look at? I know you can set the verbosity level in the mantra node, but I don't know how to actually find the render log.

Many thanks!

Ive not had many problems with Mantra and hanging, do you want to post a scene file I would be happy to look

Rob

hi dsierra ,

are you rendering transparent geometry with refractions and reflections activated ??

once i had extra long rendertime only on 1 frame due to overlapping geometry ( shaded with glass shader ) .

posted about it ( on odforce forum) but didnt get any reply , so i started ‘investigating’ and found what caused that .

i used a PolyDoctor SOP to clean the mess and render frames in a more lifetime-compatible-times .

–

hope you finished the rendering or , if not , hope you have a similar issue like mine !


.cheers

Hello,

I have been having a similar issue recently. While rendering a “not too complex” scene it renders a certain ammount of frames and then it hangs on a particular frame forever until it decides to kill the render.

I have different Mantra nodes to separate the passes, and if I render a node individually I get no feedback on the error. However if I set up my renders in a tree (so I render all my passes in a go)… When it freezes and kills the render, I see the Mantra node where it froze (and the following ones) are red, and when I middle click to read the Error it says the following:

No licenses could be found to run this application.nnPlease note, starting with Houdini 12.1, the main product is called Houdini FX (houdinifx).nYou may be trying to run Houdini (houdini) formerly known as Houdini Escape (hescape),nwhich requires a separate Houdini-Escape license that may be missing.nYou can try launching Houdini FX, instead.
Please look for a valid license server host

I'm running Houdini FX Education Edition (Build 12.1.125) and the licenses seem to be running fine as I can use the software…?

In the meantime, I'm just rendering and re-rendering when freezes… A pain in the bottom, but it's not like I can't move forward

Thanks!
Ant

zarti
hi dsierra ,

are you rendering transparent geometry with refractions and reflections activated ??

once i had extra long rendertime only on 1 frame due to overlapping geometry ( shaded with glass shader ) .

posted about it ( on odforce forum) but didnt get any reply , so i started ‘investigating’ and found what caused that .

i used a PolyDoctor SOP to clean the mess and render frames in a more lifetime-compatible-times .

–

hope you finished the rendering or , if not , hope you have a similar issue like mine !


.cheers

As a matter fact I am, except for the reflection and refraction part, I am copying a bunch of cubes to a lot of moving points on a grid and some frames there many many cubes overlapping as I set the size of the grid close to 0 so all the points get stacked on top of one another. However I am using a constant shader so not sure if this is the problem or not.

Thanks so much for this tip about overlapping refractions, Zarti! It helped me track down a bug that was causing my recent renders to hang randomly and unpredictably mid-frame.

Hi everyone. For me the problem still remains. I'm using Guided Ocean Layer in Houdini Indie and after many days of setting up the details, sims, etc. I'm stuck (or extremely slowed down) in the rendering stage because I have to babysit the render. Impossible to leave it for the night or whatever - it gets stuck on a random frame. When I run it again from that frame there are no problems. When I run it from the beginning it freezes on a different frame - no repetitive stuff.

I've tried disabling other layers (interior, boat, whitewater etc), just leaving the extended ocean. I've changed dicing, I've disabled and enabled “Add Bump to Ray Traced Displacements”. When I set Verbose to the max (5) I understand I see all the details, well it gets stuck on stuff like this:

" Creating geometry (/obj/guidedoceanlayer_fluid_extended)
Rendering: X(47, 62) Y(351, 359)
Rendering: X(63, 78) Y(351, 359)
Creating displaced geometry (/obj/guidedoceanlayer_fluid_extended)
Rendering: X(79, 94) Y(351, 359)
Rendering: X(95, 110) Y(351, 359)
Rendering: X(111, 126) Y(351, 359)"

Random frame every time. I think it's a bug, because I've tried to simplify stuff back to the basic shelf tool setup. Or maybe it's because my waves are bigger that usual? The geometry says it would need dicing set up to 24. But why the problem always occurs on a different frame?

I've checked on Houdini Indie 16.0.633 and 16.0.736. Same thing.
Thanks for any tips.

For me it was happening inconsistently too. Have you tried removing ALL transparency/refractivity from your scene? In fact remove all of the textures just to be safe.

If that solves it then you are probably experiencing the same bug with coincident polygons and refractions.

Hi. Sorry for not comming back immediately - I've found no solution and the project had to be finished in a different way (compositing magic). I've tried rebuilding the scene, making everything simple, different versions of Houdini - it still was randomly freezing

Maybe the problem is gone now in H16.5, with narrow band sim and stuff. If I ever get some time to go back to this I'll check. This was however my first major disappointment with Houdini.