I'm a noob with Houdini, but have been using C4D for years. I decided to go ahead and get H15. Today, my first full day using it, it has crashed 4 times. Don't know why, just tried creating some simple crowds, and then some FEM stuff. Crash, crash, crash.

My system is less than a year old, Win 10, 32GB RAM, 780 GTX, i7 5960 CPU.

Is it normal for Houdini to crash so easily? C4D wasn't so great with dynamics (the reason I got Houdini), but it never crashed this many times in one day.

What's in the crashlog?

Houdini crashes, all software crashes, that's a given.

What I've noticed is new users are able to make it crash more often than experienced users. It's often hard to pin down what they're doing to make it unhappy, and similarly, hard to know what the experienced users aren't doing, but after a few weeks, it seems to calm down.

Myself and about 5 others used Houdini properly in production for the first time last year, sitting among another 3 or 4 very experienced Houdini folk. Lots of swears from our side of the room to start with, by the end of the job, had all evened out.

I'll also say that crowds is one of the more bleeding edge features, and cloth+FEM one of the more computationally intense, so you're pushing Houdini pretty hard right outta the gate!

Houdini has a pretty good rep for being reliable in production, it's not like you're using Animation Master or anything. Jeez, the brain cells I lost to that thing back in the day…

I wasn't knocking Houdini so much as my noob inexperience (maybe that wasn't clear in my post.) At any rate, if the app is crashing frequently then it is obviously because of what I'm doing (or not doing.)

I purchased more memory last night (which will up my total to 64GB.) That by itself won't solve the issue, but it can't hurt. (When I built my system last year 32GB of DDR4 memory was $400–last night I got the same exact memory sticks for $160. Amazing….)

Anyhow, I haven't looked into the crash log because I haven't gotten that far with it yet…still learning…will figure it out today…

Thanks.

Ok, attached is the crash log:

thats not a crash log. that is a just a warning message. The file should be fine. The crash log is saved in /tmp folder in a txt format

Is there a specific part of the log that I should focus on?

This was the only one that I could find:

Uptime 8456 seconds
Sat Oct 17 15:54:07 2015
Caught signal 11

Traceback from 6784 ThreadId=0x00000890
+0x61a68673
+0x61a684f9
+0x61b13389
+0x617b6b7b
+0x617b6fb6
+0x71aff598
+0x7238f376
+0x7238f105
+0x72e82299
+0x72e00198
+0x72dff5ee
+0x72dfdfe5
+0x72dfe277
+0x73913791
+0x73901303
+0x73901b5a
+0xed5bc600
+0x1e0bd346
+0x1e10e7cf
+0x1e10bdc5
+0x1e10987b
+0x1e10e988
+0x1e10d96c
+0x1e10bd20
+0x1e10e918
+0x1e10d96c
+0x1e10bd20
+0x1e10987b
+0x1e1090e9
+0x6f143b9d
+0x6f14161a
+0x6f7702a4
+0x733e6bae
+0x72dff5cf
+0x72dfdfe5
+0x72dfe0de
+0x73124950
+0x73124fe7
+0x90ef240c
+0x0e3b2d92
+0x0e849f64

Tod Ryan
Is there a specific part of the log that I should focus on?

The part that you posted and the system information. The crash log indicates a graphics driver issue, so getting the card and driver version would be an excellent starting point. You should be able to find all that information in the About Houdini box. Click on “Show Detail”, right-click in the text area and select “Copy Text”. Paste it all here or send that to support.

Tod Ryan
This was the only one that I could find:

Uptime 8456 seconds
Sat Oct 17 15:54:07 2015
Caught signal 11

Traceback from 6784 ThreadId=0x00000890
+0x61a68673
+0x61a684f9
+0x61b13389
+0x617b6b7b
+0x617b6fb6
+0x71aff598

Ok, here is what you requested:

Houdini Version 15.0.244.16

Platform: windows-x86_64-cl17
Operating System: Windows 10 Pro x64 (6.2.9200)
Number of Cores: 16
Physical Memory: 31.90 GB
Number of Screens: 2
Screen 0: 1920 x 1080 at 0,0
Work Area 0: 1920 x 1040 at 0,40
Screen 1: 1920 x 1080 at 1920,0
Work Area 1: 1920 x 1040 at 1920,40

OpenGL Vendor: NVIDIA Corporation
OpenGL Renderer: GeForce GTX 780/PCIe/SSE2
OpenGL Version: 4.5.0 NVIDIA 355.82
OpenGL Shading Language: 4.50 NVIDIA
Detected: NVidia Consumer
6144 MB
355.82.0.0

Supported Extensions not in OpenGL 3.3 (Version):
EXT_extensions_string
GL_ARB_base_instance (4.2)
GL_ARB_buffer_storage (4.4)
GL_ARB_compatibility
GL_ARB_compute_shader (4.3)
GL_ARB_debug_output
GL_ARB_gpu_shader5 (4.0)
GL_ARB_gpu_shader_fp64 (4.0)
GL_ARB_multi_bind (4.4)
GL_ARB_program_interface_query (4.3)
GL_ARB_robustness
GL_ARB_sample_shading (4.0)
GL_ARB_separate_shader_objects (4.1)
GL_ARB_shader_image_load_store (4.2)
GL_ARB_shader_storage_buffer_object (4.3)
GL_ARB_tessellation_shader (4.0)
GL_ARB_texture_buffer_object_rgb32 (4.0)
GL_ARB_transform_feedback3 (4.0)
GL_ARB_vertex_attrib_64bit (4.1)
GL_EXT_abgr
GL_EXT_blend_minmax
GL_EXT_direct_state_access
GL_EXT_texture_filter_anisotropic
GL_KHR_debug (4.3)
GL_NVX_gpu_memory_info
WGL_EXT_swap_control

Unsupported OpenGL Extensions used by Houdini:
GL_ATI_meminfo

OpenGL Limits:
ELEMENTS_VERTICES 1048576
ELEMENTS_INDICES 1048576
VERTEX_UNITS 32
TESS_CONTROL_TEXTURE_IMAGE_UNITS 32
TESS_EVALUATION_TEXTURE_IMAGE_UNITS 32
GEOMETRY_UNITS 32
FRAGMENT_IMAGE_UNITS 32
COMBINED_UNITS 192
TEXTURE_SIZE 16384
3D_TEXTURE_SIZE 2048
CUBE_MAP_TEXTURE_SIZE 16384
RECTANGLE_TEXTURE_SIZE 16384
TEXTURE_ARRAY_LAYERS 2048
MAX_COLOR_TEXTURE_SAMPLES 32
MAX_DEPTH_TEXTURE_SAMPLES 32
FBO_ATTACHMENTS 8
DRAW_BUFFERS 8
VIEWPORT_DIMS 16384x16384
VERTEX_UNIFORMS 4096
FRAGMENT_UNIFORMS 4096
VERTEX_ATTRIBS 16
VERTEX_OUTPUT_COMPONENTS 128
MAX_CLIP_DISTANCES 8
PATCH_VERTICES 32
TESS_GEN_LEVEL 64
TESS_PATCH_COMPONENTS 120
TESS_CONTROL_OUTPUT_COMPONENTS 128
TESS_CONTROL_TOTAL_OUTPUT_COMPONENTS 4216
TESS_EVALUATION_OUTPUT_COMPONENTS 128
GEOMETRY_UNIFORM_COMPONENTS 2048
GEOMETRY_INPUT_COMPONENTS 128
GEOMETRY_OUTPUT_COMPONENTS 128
GEOMETRY_TOTAL_OUTPUT_COMPONENTS 1024
GEOMETRY_OUTPUT_VERTICES 1024
UNIFORM_BLOCKS 84
UNIFORM_BLOCK_SIZE 65536
UNIFORM_BUFFER_BINDINGS 84
COMBINED_VERT_UNIFORM_BLOCKS 14
COMBINED_VERT_UNIFORM_COMPS 233472
TESS_CONTROL_UNIFORM_BLOCKS 14
TESS_CONTROL_UNIFORM_COMPONENTS 2048
TESS_EVALUATION_UNIFORM_BLOCKS 14
TESS_EVALUATION_UNIFORM_COMPONENTS 2048
COMBINED_GEO_UNIFORM_BLOCKS 14
COMBINED_GEO_UNIFORM_COMPS 231424
COMBINED_FRAG_UNIFORM_BLOCKS 14
COMBINED_FRAG_UNIFORM_COMPS 233472
MAX_FRAGMENT_STORAGE_BLOCKS 16
MAX_STORAGE_BLOCK_BINDINGS 96
TRANSFORM_FEEDBACK_INT_COMPS 128
TRANSFORM_FEEDBACK_SEP_COMPS 4
TRANSFORM_FEEDBACK_SEP_ATTRIBS 4
LINE_WIDTH_RANGE 0.5 - 10
LINE_WIDTH_GRANULARITY 0.125
POINT_SIZE_RANGE 1 - 189.875
POINT_SIZE_GRANULARITY 0.125

OpenCL Platform NVIDIA CUDA
Platform Vendor NVIDIA Corporation
Platform Version OpenCL 1.2 CUDA 7.5.0
OpenCL Device GeForce GTX 780
OpenCL Type GPU
Device Version OpenCL 1.2 CUDA
Frequency 1019 MHz
Compute Units 12
Device Address Bits 64
Global Memory 6144 MB
Max Allocation 1536 MB
Global Cache 192 KB
Max Constant Args 9
Max Constant Size 64 KB
Local Mem Size 48 KB
2D Image Support 16384x16384
3D Image Support 4096x4096x4096

OpenCL Platform Extensions:
cl_khr_byte_addressable_store
cl_khr_icd
cl_khr_gl_sharing
cl_nv_compiler_options
cl_nv_device_attribute_query
cl_nv_pragma_unroll
cl_nv_d3d10_sharing
cl_khr_d3d10_sharing
cl_nv_d3d11_sharing
cl_nv_copy_opts

OpenCL Device Extensions:
cl_khr_byte_addressable_store
cl_khr_icd
cl_khr_gl_sharing
cl_nv_compiler_options
cl_nv_device_attribute_query
cl_nv_pragma_unroll
cl_nv_d3d10_sharing
cl_khr_d3d10_sharing
cl_nv_d3d11_sharing
cl_nv_copy_opts
cl_khr_global_int32_base_atomics
cl_khr_global_int32_extended_atomics
cl_khr_local_int32_base_atomics
cl_khr_local_int32_extended_atomics
cl_khr_fp64

Environment:
ALLUSERSPROFILE C:\ProgramData
APPDATA C:\Users\Tod\AppData\Roaming
CLASSPATH .;CPROGRA~1/SIDEEF~1/HOUDIN~1.16/houdini/scripts/java/sesi.jar
COMPUTERNAME DESKTOP-3EKPN4D
ComSpec C:\Windows\system32\cmd.exe
CommonProgramFiles(x86) C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files
CommonProgramFiles C:\Program Files\Common Files
CommonProgramW6432 C:\Program Files\Common Files
FPS_BROWSER_APP_PROFILE_STRING Internet Explorer
FPS_BROWSER_USER_PROFILE_STRING Default
H CPROGRA~1/SIDEEF~1/HOUDIN~1.16
HB CPROGRA~1/SIDEEF~1/HOUDIN~1.16/bin
HD CPROGRA~1/SIDEEF~1/HOUDIN~1.16/demo
HFS CPROGRA~1/SIDEEF~1/HOUDIN~1.16
HH CPROGRA~1/SIDEEF~1/HOUDIN~1.16/houdini
HHC CPROGRA~1/SIDEEF~1/HOUDIN~1.16/houdini/config
HIP CUsers/Tod
HIPFILE CUsers/Tod/untitled.hip
HIPNAME untitled
HOME CUsers/Tod/Documents
HOMEDRIVE C:
HOMEPATH \Users\Tod
HOUDINI_DESKTOP_DIR CUsers/Tod/Desktop
HOUDINI_OS Windows
HOUDINI_TEMP_DIR CUsers/Tod/AppData/Local/Temp
HOUDINI_USER_PREF_DIR CUsers/Tod/Documents/houdini15.0
HOUDINI_VERSION 15.0.244.16
HSITE CPROGRA~1/SIDEEF~1/HOUDIN~1.16/site
HT CPROGRA~1/SIDEEF~1/HOUDIN~1.16/toolkit
HTB CPROGRA~1/SIDEEF~1/HOUDIN~1.16/toolkit/bin
INTEL_DEV_REDIST C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\Intel\Shared Libraries\
JOB CUsers/Tod
LOCALAPPDATA C:\Users\Tod\AppData\Local
LOGONSERVER \\DESKTOP-3EKPN4D
MIC_LD_LIBRARY_PATH C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\Intel\Shared Libraries\compiler\lib\mic
NUMBER_OF_PROCESSORS 16
OS Windows_NT
PATH CPROGRA~1/SIDEEF~1/HOUDIN~1.16/python27;CPROGRA~1/SIDEEF~1/HOUDIN~1.16/bin;CPROGRA~1/SIDEEF~1/HOUDIN~1.16/toolkit/bin;C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\Intel\Shared Libraries\redist\intel64\compiler;C:\Windows\system32;C:\Windows;C:\Windows\System32\Wbem;C:\Windows\System32\WindowsPowerShell\v1.0\;C:\Program Files (x86)\NVIDIA Corporation\PhysX\Common;C:\Program Files (x86)\QuickTime\QTSystem\
PATHEXT .COM;.EXE;.BAT;.CMD;.VBS;.VBE;.JS;.JSE;.WSF;.WSH;.MSC
POSE CUsers/Tod/Documents/houdini15.0/poselib
PROCESSOR_ARCHITECTURE AMD64
PROCESSOR_IDENTIFIER Intel64 Family 6 Model 63 Stepping 2, GenuineIntel
PROCESSOR_LEVEL 6
PROCESSOR_REVISION 3f02
PSModulePath C:\Windows\system32\WindowsPowerShell\v1.0\Modules\
PUBLIC C:\Users\Public
PYTHONHOME CPROGRA~1/SIDEEF~1/HOUDIN~1.16/python27
ProgramData C:\ProgramData
ProgramFiles(x86) C:\Program Files (x86)
ProgramFiles C:\Program Files
ProgramW6432 C:\Program Files
QT_OPENGL_DEBUG_CONTEXT 0
QT_OPENGL_ENABLE_RETINA 0
RG_GPU_FRAMEWORK_ENGINE_RESOURCEDIR C:\Program Files\Red Giant\RGFX
SESSIONNAME Console
SystemDrive C:
SystemRoot C:\Windows
TEMP CUsers/Tod/AppData/Local/Temp
TMP C:\Users\Tod\AppData\Local\Temp
USER Tod
USERDOMAIN DESKTOP-3EKPN4D
USERDOMAIN_ROAMINGPROFILE DESKTOP-3EKPN4D
USERNAME Tod
USERPROFILE C:\Users\Tod
_HIP_SHELFTOOLCOUNT 2
windir C:\Windows