I rarely have critisim of Houdini, but I do in this case. The Interrupt function is clearly flwed. If its function is to ALWAYS make Houdini stop whatever it is doing, and give control back , then it fails often. Especcially in POP. The cook, basically never finishes. The cook window pops up, does its thing, then disappears. But houdini will not respond. Instead after another cook op window pops up, and Houdini cooks again. This goes on to infinium. Like its stuck. So I press the Interrupt. Houdini registers the interrupt. But does not return control, i.e. it does not interrupt. Instead, and this after the Interrupt has been requested. Houdini waits, with no responce for about 30 seconds, and starts to cook again.
I can sit there and press Interrupt until end of the world, but it will do no good. Houdini has not crashed, but either it ignores the interrupt, or its stuck in some kind of loop where it must, for whatever reason to keep re-cooking the POP net, over and over again. Its somewhat frustrating, becouse the only way to break the cycle is to force quit Houdini. I have encountered numerous cases when this happens.

Hey Dave,

To interrupt a process in Houdini, especially POPs, after clicking on the Interrupt button, click on the “Stop” button as well because the next frame is cooking or if “Real time” is on, Houdini is cooking the next x frames. This is most likely why you are constantly clicking on the Interrupt button.

If you dealing with SOPs, set the display flag of the current SOP to another SOP, eg a File SOP to prevent Houdini from cooking further. This is again after clicking on the Interrupt button.

Sometimes, Houdini is trying to cook another object or network usually when if a particle system has Preroll or referencing geometry through Object Merge SOPs. Either write out the geometry or use a Cache SOP to speed things up.

I agree with you it's annoying at times but more often than not, Houdini is doing lots in the background that takes time to stop.

Cheers!
steven

Hi Steve

Thank you for your reply. However, I can't make use of it. Mainly becouse the animation was not playing, and both display and render tag was on same POP.

No there is an issue with Interrupt request. In any case, I am unable to press anything at all after Interrupt button, becouse Houdini refuses to return control of it self. Its simply frozen, would sit there and cook again. Like I said, it gets stuck in some awful cycle.

DaveR

This does sound very annoying.

You can use the Performance Monitor (use Alt+y or access from the Windows menu) to try and determine what is cooking. In the Performance Monitor under the Monitor menu, select “Only Cook Time”, and make sure to toggle “Enable Output” on at the bottom of the window. Depending on what Houdini is doing, this may not prove practical, but may be worth a try.

You can also send a sample file to support, if possible, if you believe there is something truely wrong.