Hi, I am new to Houdini. I installed an apprentice version of Houdini 7. Does anyone know what is the online services user/password Houdini licensing administrator was refering to? I looked for that on the web with no success (ended up having to do a manual registration by pasting the reg codes).

Another problem is that it is unable to open the roller coster example (in the tutorials page). I was wondering if there are any compatibility issues with Houdini 6 and Houdini 5.5 files? (I havent tried the other examples yet because my bandwidth have a cap )

Anyways I get a msg while opening that says something like:

Confirm
1_final_rollercoaster.hip load failed
Warning: Too many elements found for parameter “ShadingSwitcher”
4 more warnings of same type
Warning: skipping unrecognized parameter “lookat”
5 more warnings of same type

1 more warning of the first type

If it matters, I use XP service pack 2, with Intel 82810 Graphics Controller (my system is one of those crappy Pentium III ~650mhz with 256MB of RAM and no real graphics card – amazingly Houdini actually runs ok on this piece of junk ).

On a related note, I am very much amazed at the vast amounts (thousands!) of options Houdini offers! I am wondering if anyone could give me an idea of how long it would take a newcomer such as myself to get adjusted to the basics of Houdini. This will help when organizing my schedule.

Thanks
Jack

For Apprentice users, you shouldn't need to do any of that password stuff in the license administrator. Just cancel it all. When you run Houdini, it'll give you the option to install a non-commercial license if you don't have one. This is assuming of course that you're running Houdini from a machine that is connected to the internet. If not, then manual licensing is the only way to go.

As for those warning messages, it means that the parameters from the old hip file have either changed or no longer exist in the new version. In general, backwards compatibility is maintained, so if everything else seems to work, you can just ignore them. Re-saving the .hip file as something else will get rid of those warnings when you re-open the new file.

It works with the Intel 82810 graphics controller? I guess it could be just using WinXP's default software opengl driver. (Which can be better than actual opengl drivers by the video card manufacturer's albeit slower )

you'l learn best by doing…

have a look at the videos >
Side Effects videos:
http://sidefx.vislab.usyd.edu.au/houdini_video/index.html [sidefx.vislab.usyd.edu.au]
3DBuzz videos:
(requires free registration)
http://www.3dbuzz.com [3dbuzz.com]
on the front page and in the downloads section

and look through all the hip files you can find…many are included witht the install and there are lots on the net (od etc)