I first posted this in the Apprentice forum; but, no one is helping me, so I am trying this forum.

I just downloaded Houdini Apprentice 11.0.504 and installed it. I was following a tutorial and tried to render an image. I followed the tutorial to the letter. When I tried to render it, I got an error message: “Mantra: Could not open imager”.

This is a clean install and I even paid the $99 to have watermark free renders. Does anyone know what would cause this error?

I am using an nVidia GeForce GTX 280 card. I know it is not a workstation card; but, I have used lower end GeForce cards with the older Houdini versions and was able to render. My computer is an Intel Core 2 Duo 3.16GHz with 2 GB ram and WinXP Pro.

Do I have a bad install? Or, is there a setting I am missing?

Thanks.

Are you using a hip file that was saved using an older version of Houdini? Try putting down a new Mantra ROP and rendering with that.

I followed a tutorial and created the image in Houdini 11. I put down a mantra rop and tried to render. That is when I got the error message.

I will try again.

Edit: I am still getting the error message. I plopped down a camera and then a render node (mantra) and then clicked on render. Anyone else have a problem with rendering?

upload the hip file and what's the error say?
You need to provide more information in order for other people to help u out.

Um, I wrote the error message in my first post.????? I would like someone from Sidefx to let me know what this error means, please. Thanks.

I have rendered in earlier versions of Houdini. It worked without changing any settings in the render rop.

Can you provide a hipfile? Or are you saying, in general, a mantra ROP will produce the same error?

It seems that any mantra rop will produce the same error.

I opened mplay outside of Houdini and then from within mplay I opened an image. The image opened fine; so, it can't be a problem with mplay. It is just when I open mplay within Houdini 11 through the mantra rop that I get the error “Mantra: Could not open imager”.

Is there a systems variable I need to set or something in options? I never had to in past versions of Houdini.

I got the same error too, but I think it's to do with my own Windows machine that's causing this, not sure.

But try this, usually the first time you render an image into Mplay (prior to Mplay being launched), you get that error. However, don't close that Mplay window. Go ahead and hit the render button again in Mantra, but this time around Mantra should be able to render to your MPlay window just fine and without that same error message again.

Also, double check to make sure that your image resolution is not greater than the Apprentice resolution limit.


hope this helped.

TheUsualAlex- I tried what you suggested; but, it did not work. With the initial render, 2 mplay windows open. If I click on the render button again, another mplay window opens and the error message pops up again.

I emailed support and if they don't have a solution, I asked for my money back. I am not paying for no watermark renders if I can't render.