Hi all. This is aimed mainly at the nice folks form SideFX who frequent this forum. I got Houdini Apprentice with intention of learning it, and possibly using it at some time. But the Apprentice has left me with very negative impressions of Houdini. I don't know if I should continue, or its a just a waste of time, All I have are problems, and I don't know whether its user error, or Houdini really requires good amount of tech suppourt to work. I can't get much usefull learning done, as I am fighting the application. Here are samples of the most serious ones;

1. I cannot re-authorize the Apprentice. I keep getting same damn codes, from the SideFX site, that will expire on Aug.27. In any case the Licence Manager rejects the codes.

2. The program does not render at all. Period. Mantra either does not launch, or crashes upon start. Quitting the mantra.exe proccess, as reccomended by SideFX person, does not work. Rebooting, the app, Windows session, or the whole machine has no effect.

3. Any VEX network with Mandlebrot tile crashes the application.

4. File SOP does not load geometry files unless they are in the same directory as the saved project file. I originally thought that it was the directory depth. But it has turned out to be the that geometry source files must be in same directory as saved project. I import either polygonal OBJ files or NURBS in IGES (Maya) format. I model in Rhino and formZ.
I confirmed this by doing the following test. I took a copy of the same OBJ file, and placed it outside of project folder. In SOP File I first had it load the file in the same folder as saved project file, which loaded just fine.
I then retargeted the File SOP to load the file, outside of project folder. The file failed to load, and FileSOP tile turned to red play button. When retargeted to original , it loaded just fine. To verify the validity, I swapped the locations of two OBJ files. In new Houdini project I repeated the same test with same results. So there is something screwy going on with Houdini.

Thank you for any help you can offer.

Dave Rindner

Hi David,

DavidRindner
Hi all. This is aimed mainly at the nice folks form SideFX who frequent this forum. I got Houdini Apprentice with intention of learning it, and possibly using it at some time. But the Apprentice has left me with very negative impressions of Houdini. I don't know if I should continue, or its a just a waste of time, All I have are problems, and I don't know whether its user error, or Houdini really requires good amount of tech suppourt to work. I can't get much usefull learning done, as I am fighting the application. Here are samples of the most serious ones;

1. I cannot re-authorize the Apprentice. I keep getting same damn codes, from the SideFX site, that will expire on Aug.27. In any case the Licence Manager rejects the codes.

This is because your license is still valid, hence re-authorization is not working.

2. The program does not render at all. Period. Mantra either does not launch, or crashes upon start. Quitting the mantra.exe proccess, as reccomended by SideFX person, does not work. Rebooting, the app, Windows session, or the whole machine has no effect.

Have you tried to render with a default Houdini session? Please start a new Houdini session & add a Box SOP in the model Object. Can you render with fast_mantra or mantra1? Also, were you trying to render to disk or to interactive mplay? If you're trying to render to disk, please check to make sure the path is correct.

3. Any VEX network with Mandlebrot tile crashes the application.

I just tried it & Houdini does not crash. My network is two Parameter VOPs which I connected to a Color Mix VOP's primary & secondary inputs. I then added the Mandelbrot VOP & connected the amount to the Bias input of the Color Mix VOP. Finally, the Color Mix's Color output is connected to Cf.

4. File SOP does not load geometry files unless they are in the same directory as the saved project file. I originally thought that it was the directory depth. But it has turned out to be the that geometry source files must be in same directory as saved project. I import either polygonal OBJ files or NURBS in IGES (Maya) format. I model in Rhino and formZ.
I confirmed this by doing the following test. I took a copy of the same OBJ file, and placed it outside of project folder. In SOP File I first had it load the file in the same folder as saved project file, which loaded just fine.
I then retargeted the File SOP to load the file, outside of project folder. The file failed to load, and FileSOP tile turned to red play button. When retargeted to original , it loaded just fine. To verify the validity, I swapped the locations of two OBJ files. In new Houdini project I repeated the same test with same results. So there is something screwy going on with Houdini.

I tried the above with a default Houdini session, added a File SOP in the model Object & loaded a geometry from a different directory without any problems. The OBJ file is residing in Drive P of my system & the path is “ptest.obj”.

I'm not very sure what went wrong but I'll try my very best to help you.

Thanks!

Cheers!
steven