Hello, I am new to Hoidini, looking for the way to bring up the console window. I searched the net including this forum, did not manage to find the answer, got an impression that there can be some confusion in according questions and answers: it seems that frequently it is rather supposed it to be the shell or command prompt window and/or the things are different on Windows and Mac/Linux. The question is about the window, presented on the attached screenshot, the OS is Windows.

Currently I can see this window due to the fact that after upgrading to 16.0.557 it is always opens as Houdini starts to display a warning from QT. There was no such issue with Houdini before this version, I believe, and the window was not shown. In any way, I have no idea how to bring this window up unless it opens by itself or if I have closed it. How can it be done?

The need of getting this window is that I would like to see output of the printf function for debugging VEX code and it outputs in that window, as shown on the attached screenshot.

Is there a way to see its output somewhere else? I tried the approach of starting Houdini from the command prompt mentioned for Mac with no success - it looks that it does not apply to Windows and the printf output gets into that console window no matter of the way of starting Houdini.
Is there another way to see the output of printf in Houdini on Windows?

I'm not sure I'm understanding you. The initial console pop up shouldn't detract you from using it to do printf debugging. The VEX printf's would just go to the end of text. If it annoys you to see it, you can hit the “Clear” button after starting.

Hello, the main question is “how to bring this window up unless it opens by itself or if I have closed it. How can it be done?”

I believe that normally Houdini starts without showing this window, it just happened that in 16.0.557 it indeed pops up each time the application starts to display that Qt warning, which can be fixed in the next version of Houdini. Restarting the application to see the window if it was accidentally closed, does not seem to be a proper approach in any way.

If that console window is accidentally closed, then it will open again by itself when there's the next printf.

Thank you. It turns out that in the according experiment I initially did, printf was not really called.

BTW, do you have QT_DEVICE_PIXEL_RATIO set in your environment? If you do, then you should unset it. Houdini now sets QT_SCREEN_SCALE_FACTORS internally and so your environment might conflict with that.

Thank you for the advice. I considered the according warning to be Houdini's own configuration issue introduced in the last version, which still can hardly matter. Checked my environment variables and found an entry which sets QT_DEVICE_PIXEL_RATIO to “auto”. After deleting that entry Houdini shows no according warning.

edward
If that console window is accidentally closed, then it will open again by itself when there's the next printf.

In my experience, the console is not reappearing.

AnsonSavage

edward
If that console window is accidentally closed, then it will open again by itself when there's the next printf.

In my experience, the console is not reappearing.

*Oops, sorry for the confusion, it was because I was running on Linux.