Ok, I've surfed through the forums and done a few searchs, I'm probebly not wording the search right, so please excuse me if this has been asked before.

“you must first set up the shell environment.
At a C shell prompt (csh or tcsh), type the following:

source houdini_setup

or from a bash shell, type:

source houdini_setup_bash

This command initializes the current shell's environment to run
Houdini”
What? :?
I'm just trying to get it to run for a quick evaluation. I've been using Metasequoia for a couple of years, Terragen and World machine for about as long. I'm also a beta tester for Spiral graphics Genetic2 {well 2.5 pro now}. I know it's just ingorance, but if I can't just install it and use it, I'm knda lost.

Those instructions are for Linux users. I assume that you're on Windows. So those don't apply to you.

Download the latest production build from:
http://www.sidefx.com/download [sidefx.com]

Run the downloaded installation program. Follow the prompts. When it's all installed, go to Start Menu > All Programs > Side Effects Software > Houdini 8.0.474 > Houdini Master. The first time you do this, a dialog will show up prompting you for a license. Click on the first link where it says to install a non-commercial license. Follow the prompts. That's it.

I got it, something didn't install right the first time. helps if you don't have a couple of programs running when your doing an install ops:

Soon as I can I'll give it a run. What I'm looking for is a quality rendering program that will import. Like I said I've been using Metasequoia for a while, and they finally fixed the export function. Meta dosen't render worth a flip, but it's an excelent dedicated modeler, not famcy, but easy to use and learn. :wink:

ok, I've evaluated it.