In XSI I would have called this a memory corruption. As it fixes itself if its restarted.

I've found in both Houdini 8 and 8.1 I will get a situation -after working on a scene for awhile- that suddenly my keyboard input is ‘blocked’-yet mouse input still works. But I can't do much more with the scene except save it. If I go outside Houdini the keyboard is indeed working.
If I restart Houdini and load that scene again everything is back to normal and I can continue to work.

Graphics is a Quadro FX 500/600. Is there anything I could have set on the graphics card or in Houdini itself that would account for this?
It can happen 5-10 times a day if I am working all day…

-ral

Never heard of it. I assume you're on Windows? I'm a little dubious of the “memory corruption” description - memory doesn't really become corrupted and then somehow “rights” itself. My first guess is you're running out of memory. My second guess is you have bad memory(try running memtest [memtest86.com] overnight), the latter especially if you're getting the same symptoms with two packages. The third guess is something messed up in your system - yup it could be the video driver - try reinstalling/upgrading.

Someone else with more Windows experience might jump in with a “me-too”, though.

Cheers,

J.C.

Yup Windows. I'll try that memory test-good one.

I haven't scene XSI do this particular thing-the only thing in common is
that its ‘suddenly strange unexpected behavior that rights itself when the application is restarted’. I've used XSI the most but I'll occasionaly see something like this in Max or Maya as well.

-ral

also something can be wrong with your usb port

Mystery solved.

Its unfortunet that Houdini uses the scroll-lock key to lock the UI for keyboard input. I happen to have two machines and 1 monitor set and use a switcher to go back-and-forth between them.
As it happens the keyboard command to hop back and forth is scroll-lock ‘1’ (or ‘2’) depending on which machine I work.
I don't think there is any flexibility for the switcher-what about Houdini?
Can I turn that feature off?

-ral

just in case it happens to someone else … it happened to me almost the same… on Linux.

I was selecting multiples primitives.. and after a while the “sticky keys (accessibility features) popped up asking if you would enable 'em…. I wrongly pressed ”ok" (i was selecting primitives..) .. and from then.. i had to log out my session and get back in before I was able to use most of the keys…

my 0.02

cheers

Can you just minimize Houdini or go to a different window before switching?

Yes in my case minimising Houdini does work. Its just a workflow thing-I probably will not always think to do that. Now that I know what the issue really is its not a big deal (but I would turn off that keyboard input lock command if I could).

My switcher requires two presses of scroll lock (until there is a beep)
then I can do the monitor switch (this also toggles Houdini's input lock ‘on’ and ‘off’ again)-but occasionaly the switcher sticks or if I do it too quickly I might hit scroll lock 3 or some odd number of times and thats when I was getting confused by Houdini being keyboard locked.

It would be nice if there was a user preference to disable this though…
Its not a functionaly I'd really use (no cats allowed in my studio).

-ral

I agree. I used to have a switcher at home and that's exactly how you use them. For whatever reason the Scroll key is hardwired into Houdini apparently outside the hotkey preferences. It would be great if it could be folded into the Hotkey options, especially since it's a pretty common standard to have Scroll as a switcher command(precisely because it's so rarely used).

Cheers,

J.C.