Christoph Fasching

Hi everyone,

I wanted to flag a severe stability issue with the default Vulkan Viewport in Houdini 21 on Linux (specifically Ubuntu/Pop!_OS setups with high-end Nvidia hardware like the RTX 3090).

Interacting with the viewport triggers massive, system-wide display server deadlocks.
The entire operating system freezes completely for several seconds at a time.
Sometimes the UI enters a "zombie" state where live texture/icon caches break, turning the playbar and toolbars into flat grey blocks.

The only solution I found was to bypass the Vulkan viewport and falling back to the mature OpenGL engine instantly resolves the issue, restoring 100% system responsiveness.

To fix this permanently, add this line to your houdini.env file:

Hopefully, the SideFX dev team can address these specific Linux driver stalls soon.
Please me know if anyone else has run into this or logged an official bug ID!

Umang_Raj
probably they are building the .5 and the major release at the same time

Maybe, but it seems a bit strange. They specifically advertise "Character Animation in Houdini 22":

"Warren will begin by teaching all about new character animation features in Houdini 22."

And also:

"TumbleRig | Cartoony Rigging in Houdini"

"Magnus will show in detail how a cartoony frog character was created in Houdini 22."

I'm not saying it's impossible that they're developing 21.5 and 22 in parallel, but it would be a bit odd to showcase Houdini 22 features so prominently if the next release were going to be 21.5.

Gaalvk
21.5 ?

well that's what I thought, but apparently no 21.5