simon backlund

C_p_H-kwiknip

simonsimon
I have the MBP 2017 and I had huge issues with the QT5 version, basically unusable sometimes. I switched to QT4 and all those issues disappeared but I still have issues with rendering.

here are some of the issues I had:

General instability.
Can not use the Ladder function with my Wacom tablet.
Moving around in the network view is not smooth. I do not know what triggers it. Sometimes it only affects the left side of the network view (Wacom tablet).
Can not hover over different node’s inputs and see what they are called. The inputs on the pyro solver for example.
Having trouble deleting nodes.
Having trouble creating nodes, especially when pressing tab and dropping it using the Enter key.
Launching the flip book takes forever.
Connecting nodes. (Wacom tablet)

The only issue remaining is probably the worst.
Every time I render, the generation of the scene takes about 22 seconds which is extremely frustrating. I do not know how to fix it so I suppose I will be waiting for the external GPU unless anyone here knows what is going on.

Any information is useful.

Thanks

Setting these Houdini Environment Variables may also help improve stability in various macOS cases similar to what you've experienced.

# ~/Library/Preferences/houdini/16.0/houdini.env

HOUDINI_ENABLE_TABLET = 1
#Enable Wacom tablet support (also try the driver downgrade mentioned by aRtye if this has no effect).

HOUDINI_FAST_SKIN_BLENDSHAPES = 1
# Enable experimental feature to use the GPU to do deformation in SOP_Deform and SOP_BlendShapes.

HOUDINI_NO_LEGACY_MENUS = 1
# When set, Houdini will not load the old MainMenuMaster, MaindMenuEscape, and MainMenuCommon menu files. It will only use the new MainMenuMaster.xml, MainMenuEscape.xml, and MainMenuCommon.xml.

HOUDINI_OGL_FAST_BONES = 1
# When enabled, nulls and bones rendering is done by accumulating all the objects and issuing one instanced drawing call.

HOUDINI_OGL_MAX_GL_VERSION = “4.1”
# By default this is zero, indicating that Houdini should use all available features that the OpenGL driver provides. It can be set to any OpenGL version (major.minor, like “2.1”) and only those OpenGL features that were part of the OpenGL core at that version will be enabled.

HOUDINI_ENABLE_RETINA = 0
# If set to 0, turns off Houdini’s support for retina displays under OSX. This will cause Houdini to act as if the display has half the resolution it actually has, resulting in a slightly pixelated interface. The advantage is that Houdini will also use less Video RAM for buffers, and run fewer pixels through the OpenGL shader pipeline, resulting in slightly increased performance. Linux and Windows are not affected by this setting.

HOUDINI_UISCALE = 65
# This specifies a fixed scale factor to adjust the dots-per-inch Houdini uses for displaying ui. A value of 100 will provide the default of 85 dpi. A value of 200 will have all fonts and icons twice that size, and 50 will make them half that size. A value of -1 will cause the dpi to be calculated from the monitor’s dimensions and resolution, or by HOUDINI_OVERRIDE_*.

HOUDINI_DISABLE_SOHO_SPOOLING = 1
# When this variable is defined, interactive rendering from within Houdini will send data directly to the renderer over a pipe rather than first saving it to a temporary file and then spooling it to the renderer in a separate thread.

Thanks for your info.

I tried adding those variables but it made things worse in terms of rendering.
So I am screwed until further notice.

The MacBook Pro was not so Pro after all hah.

Thank you for the help.

I finally managed to find the file. It just randomly popped up. Great.

I did set those variables but it actually made things worse in terms of the rendering.
So I suppose I am screwed until further notice.

Hurray for MacBook “Pro”!

Thanks for your help!

Thanks for explaining. It did not help unfortunately…

I am trying the fix with the environment variables but I can't find the file. Very frustrating.
Even searching for the houdini.env doesn't give any results.

It is just not meant for me to use Houdini on this machine!