Hi,

I have a small problem with the UI of the Linux version of Houdini Apprentice (both 5.5.208 and 5.5.230). While most of the time it works just fine, in some cases (for example, when switching desktops from the Desks menu and when selecting commands by clicking the icons on the toolbars) the UI needs longer then expected to redraw, sometimes even frustratingly long. The 3D performance of the UI is excelent, it's just the refresh of the toolbars, etc. that slows it down. I've set double buffering on, and line antialiasing off (not that the second should matter) in the general preferences. I have a 1.2 GHz Athlon with a GeForce 2 MX400 runing Mandrake 8.2 and the latest NVidia drivers. I've also tested the Windows version of Houdini under Windows 2000 with SP1 and the latest NVidia drivers and the UI is much more responsive. Is anybody else having this problem and what can be done solve this?

Thanks in advance,
Goran

Hi,

The difference in performance between Linux & Windows is partly due to the optimization of the drivers. Windows drivers have been around much longer than Linux plus Linux drivers are still pretty new.

Please try hiding the icon toolbars as you can access all the OPs from the Tab menu & for the too that you do not wish to hide, for example, the toolbars above the viewport, try setting to “Generic” or “Filter” or a Toolbar group that has the least number of icons.

Also, you might want to try setting the following environment variable to have a value of 1:
HOUDINI_OGL_DBL_BUFFER_FIX
Some graphics boards (notably quadro and gforce) boards have
problems writing simultaneously to the front and back buffers. By
setting this variable to 1, Houdini will only write to one buffer
at a time.

Please go to this link [sidefx.com] for an example of how to set an environment variable in Windows.

For Linux, add the following to your .tcshrc file:
setenv HOUDINI_OGL_DBL_BUFFER_FIX 1

I hope the above helps!

Cheers!
steven

Thanks! Setting HOUDINI_OGL_DBL_BUFFER_FIX to 1 did the trick. Houdini runs much, much smoother now.

Thanks again,
Kocka

Which driver version are you running? This option was automatically enabled for early driver versions but then subsequently disabled as it appeared that new driver versions had fixed the performance problem. I'm wondering if they have re-introduced the bug again for geforce cards. I've been running on a Quadro and at least as of 41.03, the problems hasn't re-appeared.

I'm running 1.0-4191 under Linux and 41.09 under Windows. I noticed that while setting HOUDINI_OGL_DBL_BUFFER_FIX to 1 solved the refresh problems in Linux, in Windows the interface runs much smoother without setting the variable or with it set to 0.

Goran