Viewport flipbook does not work in Win versdion. Upon PRESS of ACCEPT, nothing happens.
The window closes, and there is no Flipbook created.

PLEASE DON'T tell me I have to submit a HIP file for that.

Flipbook works perfectly well here (822 Windows). Also, I never had memory leaks problems with 822.
Actually, I think if there was a problem with the 822 flipbook, somebody would have posted about it before.

Dragos

DavidRindner
Viewport flipbook does not work in Win versdion. Upon PRESS of ACCEPT, nothing happens.
The window closes, and there is no Flipbook created.

PLEASE DON'T tell me I have to submit a HIP file for that.

There may be a flipbook lockfile lying around. Check in:

C:\Documents and Settings\<user>\My Documents\houdini8.x

If you see a file called .flipbook_lock.<machine_name>, try deleting it and see if that works. Sometimes, if your box suddenly goes down while viewing with mplay, this file is not removed. Good luck!

Rob

Nope. No flipboook lock file. THX for info. Maybe I am doing something wrong. The view is set to active render camera. I open Flipbook options, set them, then press ACCEPT. Nothing happens. The scene does not begin playback for flipbook. If I press PLAY aftetrwarfds, the scene plays but no images are saved, no MPLAY pops up. Like I said, nothing happens. Houdini contunies working fine.

There is a memory leak, and its severe. I can see it in my Task Manager. Every action that I do, increases memory usage of Houdini. I have UNDO cache set too 1000kb. Eventually memory usage goes over 1.2gb of ram and Houdini freezes. I don't have to add anything to the scene. Merely manioulate keyframes. Please don't tell me it does not exist, I am experiencing it.

I tried this in 8.1.822 as well and things seem to be fine. It's hard to tell what the problem is because no one seems to be able to reproduce it. Are you able to provide steps starting from a brand new Houdini session with no file?

To be sure, did you find your houdini8.1 directory? Try renaming to something like houdini8.1.old so that it gets regenerated on startup of Houdini.

The flipbook is closely tied to video drivers so what video card and driver version are you running? Also, what screen resolution are you running at? Try running the flipbook with a small viewport. Make sure that you only have 1 viewport open. (and only 1 Houdini session open for that matter.)

Did the flipbook work for you before?

The flipbook writes out the images to disk. Make sure you have at least a couple of megs free on the drive where your temp directory lives (typically on C: ). Are you logged into the system as Administrator? (this rules out the possiblity that Houdini couldn't write to the temp directory.)

As for the memory leak, I've seen some really bad video drivers where just hitting play (on a brand new Houdini session) and letting it loop would cause memory leaks. You might want to try this on your system, looking at the memory usage of Houdini in the Task Manager.

Do you have any HOUDINI environment variables set?

What operating system are you running?

Does mplay pop up when you try doing a mantra render?

The other thing that sometimes gets me is the “Scoped Channel Keyframes Only” option, which is saved (along with all the other flipbook options) to your hip file. If you don't have scoped keys, nothing happens when pressing Accept (an info dialog at minimum would be nice).

Also, the 81.xx NVidia drivers for Windows have some pretty serious problems with Houdini, and I've also heard of some memory issues with certain ATI drivers.

Well I have the latest release (not beta) Nvidia drivers for Quaddro4500.
My Flipbook does not work either with or without Scoped Channels option.

The statement that Houdini has serious problems with both Nvidia and ATI is rather alarming, thats the entire gamut pro level OpenGL vendors.

The Windows version seems rather underdeveloped in comparison to LINUX.
Wazzup with dat.

DavidRindner
Please don't tell me it does not exist, I am experiencing it.

The fact that ONE user experiences a memory leak (together with other disfunctionalities regarding Houdini) is not an indication that a “severe” memory leak EXISTS, but rather that there is a particular problem with that user's system configuration and Houdini.

Dragos

OK. Based on everything I read in this thread, my conclusion is that Houdini 8.1.859 and 822 have a problem with QuadroFX4500.

My system is;
Alienware workstation

Quad Opteron 280 4GB ram
QuaddroFX4500
1920X1200 LCD

Thats a fairly common config among XP high end workstations. Maya, RF4, AE 7, Boujou all work great. I don't run them concurrently with Houdini.

Thats too bad.

The other thing that sometimes gets me is the “Scoped Channel Keyframes Only” option, which is saved (along with all the other flipbook options) to your hip file. If you don't have scoped keys, nothing happens when pressing Accept (an info dialog at minimum would be nice).

Also, the 81.xx NVidia drivers for Windows have some pretty serious problems with Houdini, and I've also heard of some memory issues with certain ATI drivers.