Below is the same desk with the same scene. Notice the fact that I can't see my vex shader, in the first pic, but in the second I can, and both have “Toolbars and Controls” turned on, but in the first pic, the controls aren't actually there.

The difference between these two pics is that I restarted houdini to get my controls, and to get my vex surface preview to work. This bug happens for me when I split a pane. Even if it's a viewer pane, or a network pane, a lot of times splitting panes seems to create a “dead” pane like the pane in the lower left hand corner of the first pic. It's supposed to be a viewer, but nothing's on the screen, and there're no controls, even though they're turned on. I searched the forums and help but couldn't find anything… seems to be a pretty general thing, maybe this is a known bug, I dunno.

Sorry about the image size, but I wanted to show that the lower right pane works fine, and it was split from the upper right network view. But the lower left pane doesn't work, and it was split split from the upper left viewer pane.

Edit: Using houdini 8.1.666, it says in the second pic, but for some reason not in the first. I would post the build, but I don't know how to check that.

yeah, this has been regulary happening to me since ehh.. dunno - version 6.5? It can happen when you split panes. I talked to hoknamahn, but he just doesn't neormally split panes so he didn't notice that. It's not too annoying though - just save your new desktop layout and restart houdini.

ReggieFourmyle
I would post the build, but I don't know how to check that.

Choose Version under the main Help menu to see the version in the bottom message bar. Alternatively, you can run “version” in a textport.

Choose Version under the main Help menu to see the version in the bottom message bar. Alternatively, you can run “version” in a textport.

I said I can't find the build, not the version number. How could you miss that, it was less than a sentence away from where I said that I can't find the build…?

Using houdini 8.1.66, it says in the second pic, but for some reason not in the first. I would post the build, but I don't know how to check that.

In the thread: What to do if you've found a ‘bug’ in Apprentice, Wolf's example includes a build number… so I looked around to try to find it and couldn't. Hence my original statement. I was only trying to conform to the rules on the forum, but if it's not important…nm.

I said I can't find the build

The build number is the last number in the version string. ie, 8.1.build#. Ondrej's instructions are correct. It's also in the splash screen that pops up when you run Houdini (though, under 8.1 in very small print).

If you are indeed running 8.1.66, you may want to upgrade The latest is 8.1.715 (build 715).

ahh, thank you twod, that explains a lot more . If Ondrej just told me that, I would've already posted the build number. But on a side note, this number looks nothing like wolfwood's example =/. Yea, I wanna get 8.17 soon, maybe tonight.

Ok, so I talked about it a little more with some people, and here's some more info:

The build I was looking for was the OS's build. So I should stated:

Houdini: 8.1.666
Build: Windows i686

and some steps to reproduce this are:

1) Start houdini with four panes, as the pics above show, or split houdini into 4 panes, as the pics show.
2) Close the two bottom panes (it can actually be any two panes)
3) Split the right pane
4) Split the left pane, and notice that it creates a dead pane.

These steps are actually not necessary at all, closing and splitting panes randomly creates these dead panes all over the place for me. But the steps do create the dead panes, 100% of the time for me atleast.

ReggieFourmyle
But on a side note, this number looks nothing like wolfwood's example =/. Yea, I wanna get 8.17 soon, maybe tonight.

I apologize for all the confusion I have caused. In the bug thread that I posted the “Build” I was refering to was “Linux Build” since there are 3 different ones.

Once again I'm sorry for any inconvenience that I caused.

Update: 6 months later and Houdini 8.2.13 does this just as much.

This is a known bug with pane splitting. As you figured out, saving and quitting the session then relaunching fixes the problem.

It's the first split of a viewport that causes the bug. All subsequent splits will be fine.

Sorry I didn't pipe up earlier on this thread.

Oh cool, atleast now I know how to deal with the problem and atleast it's known, maybe it'll get fixed with h9.