I just bought/installed the HD learning edition. I'll admit I am just fiddling, but I don't think what I'm seeing should happen. whenever i PLAY an animation it seems to work, but when I PAUSE it the entire screen goes black except for a frozen window of the animation. I have to kill it via Task Manager.

Is this a video driver issue, or a bad install?

It looks like maybe my Nvidia card isn't good enough…that seems weird since it runs 3DSMax like a dream.

If it turns out this machine (Dell XPS with 555 graphics card) won't run Houdini, what are my options?

Can you unlicense a machine (this laptop) and license a different without hassles - moving it to my desktop?

You can do it from the License Administrator that ships with Houdini.
More details here:

http://www.sidefx.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1208&Itemid=273 [sidefx.com]

Cheers

Sad that I'm going to have to do that. I guess I'm glad I've got Max as well. I'm not seeing anything going on in Houdini that should cause it to act up on the machine I have. My plan was to have my kids use it on comparable laptops for school, guess it's $100 down the tubes. I have Max if I need to be tied to my desktop.

I see a few threads on this, and some hint that they are ‘working on this’…is there any chance of it, or is Houdini sort of stuck in the past (dedicated ‘professional’ graphics card)?

if by “…dedicated ‘professional’ graphics card…”
you mean something that has reasonable openGL then yes Houdini is stuck in the past…
Houdini isn't a game running on DirectX it's “a professional graphics application” and therefore it requires a “professional graphics card(or reasonable level)” as is detailed in the “System Requirements” page:
http://www.sidefx.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=415&Itemid=269 [sidefx.com]

Something else may be up, as I can run Houdini on a rather slow laptop with a Geforce 210m (Asus UL50VT, Win7-64, 4 gigs ram). Mplay works fine.

It's not a workstation experience, but enough for random experimentation while travelling and the like.

phloog
It looks like maybe my Nvidia card isn't good enough…that seems weird since it runs 3DSMax like a dream.

If it turns out this machine (Dell XPS with 555 graphics card) won't run Houdini, what are my options?

Can you unlicense a machine (this laptop) and license a different without hassles - moving it to my desktop?

What have you tried to actually get it working? Tried rolling back to an older version of the drivers or installing some daily/nightly (or whatever nvidia calls them)?

I run Houdini fine on my Geforce 310M and there is a lot of people using it without problems and without a Quadro card.

What I meant by in the past is that with gaming cards having so much power, most companies I deal with have embraced them and don't require dedicated high-end cards, particularly since many times the hardware is the same and the mfr are just throttling them down artificially.

This machine does great with very large/complex scenes in Vue, zbrush, max, city engine, etc. That is why I am thrown by an application that seems to be a max competitor, but also seems to require monster cards.

It looks like SOME folks have it running on lesser hardware, so maybe there is hope, but I am loathe to do a whole lot of rolling back of drivers precisely because of how many very high end pieces of graphics software run very well together on it now.

And as you may have gleaned here, many people ARE running Houdini fine on “game cards”.

One of my workstations runs a Geforce 460. The free Houdini Escape has run fine on at least eight machines I've installed it on over time. Most with older-to-ancient Nvidia cards (note: really old boxes do not cut it as Houdini render nodes :-).

You may want to check another active thread in this forum regarding environment variables that may fix the particular problems you are encountering. He's having issues with a ATI card, but the fix may be similar.

Best of luck.

phloog
What I meant by in the past is that with gaming cards having so much power, most companies I deal with have embraced them and don't require dedicated high-end cards, particularly since many times the hardware is the same and the mfr are just throttling them down artificially.

Yeah, i haven't given up yet. What makes me think that the card is fine - other than it works on other apps, is WHEN the glitches happen. I can make a scene of one sphere and it happens. I can make a scene of a sphere converted to a fluid and dripping over a torus and it works fine and fast. The UI is flaking out, regardless of volume of polys.

Edit: also, I agree about old machines and ANY high end package. I always dream that the next machine takes over and the old becomes a farm machine…but I end up with the new machine and a lot of idle old boxes taking up space

http://www.sidefx.com/index.php?option=com_forum&Itemid=172&page=viewtopic&t=23072 [sidefx.com] was the thread I mentioned. Perhaps that environment variable might help you out too (I know not what it does, but it's yet another path to check).

As for old machines. I upgraded two recently to 4.3Ghz/16gig, including water cooling, for about $440.00 each.

So what if the CDRom drive is from the 90's and the graphics card would struggle with Doom, it renders good :-).

I'm currently on that thread, actually….I tried one, but also did some driver work…since it's an intermittent issue I won't know if it worked for a while, and if it DOES work I won't know if it's the driver or the other….not very scientific of me, I'm afraid.

I think some captcha for the sign up process to the forum would be a good idea

I think some captcha for the sign up process to the forum would be a good idea

+1

Erik_JE
I think some captcha for the sign up process to the forum would be a good idea

There is. From what we can tell in the server logs, the automated spammers come by and fail to create the account. However, it then gets passed along to some human that creates the account for them.

See: http://www.businessinsider.com/40-of-amazons-mechanical-turk-is-spam-2010-12 [businessinsider.com]