Dear developers and fellow co-sufferers.

This POS (Piece Of Software), which is Houdini 12.0.543.9 on my 10.6.8 mac os, has completely undergone all the limits of my patience. First, on coming to this forum, me, being full of desire to help in development of aforementioned POS, being so grateful for letting me touch the King Of 3d Magic, - me was going to start the series of posts of my experience of working with the software.

Now, after seeing thousands of posts, related to technical issues with the POS, I have to post only my final rambling and my feeling of what I have had already.

Today I am wiping away the Great King of Rats from my system just to stay sane and mentally balanced.

After hundreds of crashes (dozens of times each day), after dealing (and finally discovering roundabouts) of UI glitches, after having had hundreds of hours spent dealing with technical issues all I have to do is just surrender and return to good old Lightwave and Blender. And in the end, just to part good friends here is my contribution as a permanent beta tester.

1. User UI
UI is cluttered, one needs too many clicks. Spacebar for navigation works 83% of all the time, which is, definitely, absolutely unsatisfactory.

2. Bugs everywhere
I have never seen any node or operation which is flawless.

3. OpenGL
Forget about it. Too buggy to explain.

4. Help documentation
No definitions of terms (e.g., I don't understand what shape or hull means in the context). Reading the obscure explanations can only give, sporadically, a hint of idea after reading it several times.

Sorry, dear developers, the Buggini is too far from being a stable version. Let's name it a pre-beta. But it is not fair to turn the users, whom you charge even as low as 100$ for apprentice, into beta-testers, and more bizarre seems marketing it at the price for a commercial license. Oh, don't get me wrong, I am not going to install a new OS to justify the requirements of new, ‘bug-free’, version of the software.

I really liked the concept of procedural approach, which you declare, I didn't like at all the implementation.

Yours,
Sincerely,
Kyril

Well, the version of Houdini came out at February 26, 2012, meaning it's, hm, old. This, along with the fact you're on OSX (which IIRC had to get its own set of OpenGL fixes in just the latest beta) might be enough cause for frustration. Bug fixes come out on a daily basis (which is why usually it's a good idea to install the latest daily build first if you experience buggy behaviour.)

Actually you do sound like having GL/driver issues (knowing this from personal experience ), as Houdini itself is very stable. (I should go as far as saying it's one of the best in terms of both stability and support.)

Look into what you can do about updating your graphics driver (Maya, for instance “officially” works only with certain versions of drivers). Also, update at least the latest daily build of H12 available.

First of all upgrade to latest production build. Don't download daily builds which marked yellow or red. Those usually fail SESI internal test.

The UI issues can certainly be a problem sometimes I'd admit (although a LOT of them are very much improved in Houdini 14)

But when it comes to nodes not functioning correctly - well, if Houdini has taught me one thing over the years, it's that if you think there's a bug in functionality, check twice, check three times, and check again… because it almost always turns out to be something stupid I did. Really, compared to every other 3D package I've used, I've never come across one where the core logic behind everything was as consistently sound and dependable as in Houdini.

It's a complicated package. It pretty much allows you to do anything imaginable - more akin to a programming language like C++ than to a conventional 3D package. But likewise it would be like saying C++ was buggy and broken. C++ *can* yield a buggy and broken program, but usually only because of flaws in the implementation you've come up with.

I know there are bugs, I don't presume Houdini to be perfect, but seriously, always triple-check your own methodology first. I can't count the number of times I've gotten frustrated with Houdini only to end up feeling stupid when I've realised it was something I did wrong.

danwood82
The UI issues can certainly be a problem sometimes I'd admit (although a LOT of them are very much improved in Houdini 14)

Yeah, but they're never as serious as he'd experienced, and crashes are very rare. IMHO if a 3d app keeps crashing around constantly, it's usually a video card driver problem.

danwood82
But when it comes to nodes not functioning correctly - well, if Houdini has taught me one thing over the years, it's that if you think there's a bug in functionality, check twice, check three times, and check again… because it almost always turns out to be something stupid I did.

Well, some operators are 10+ years old, so you can bump into silly things or even crashes. But reporting these usually gets them fixed by the devs in a next daily build. (they usually fix most small bugs in a few days or so)

Strange, I have a Mac and is working quite well, do you have an nVidia graphic's card?

BTW, you should seriously upgrade to OS 10.10 as there has been MAJOR Apple updates on their graphics drivers, that may be the issue.

Good luck.

Dear Riviera, PradeepBarua and Danwood82. Thank you guys for your quick response and willingness to help!

I'm sorry for my being too emotional about the issue. I really liked the concepts Houdini is based on and, frankly, think the software is fantastic. It was my experience laid top on expectations of a flawless streamline that led me into somewhat discrepancy with the reality and, consequently, to a frustration.

We all, the mac users, (ok, at least some of us), have a strong feeling of being princes of the whole IT industry, assuming every software is obliged to run on macs smoother and more efficient even on vintage machines than the rest of the cpu junk. My experience proved the irony behind that.

I really wish I could use Houdini, and maybe, after I'll have upgraded all my garage of macs, what I definitely do not want to do at the moment (I love you, Steve – nothing can beat the feel of older OSXs), I will return to a stable, mac-proof OpenGL debugged masterpiece.

Meanwhile, the Houdini community on the forums is a jewell of the 3D world, very friendly and helpful, not mentioned the vast professional experience of the artists.

Cheers!

Thanks for the heads-up. Thankfully we are all now well aware of the dangers and frustrations that lurk running older softwares. Hopefully we can get even older bug reports to come in so as to warn others too before we head down that path.

My first experiences with Houdini were very crashy too. I feel that Houdini suffers from, and I'll use a Blender term here, “stale data”. This means if you use Houdini the wrong way it will crash more than if you use Houdini the right way. This is why we see posts from the Houdini Masters who claim it is very stable while noobs find it problematic.

I agree with the others that there is no point in running older versions. As I type this on my 10.6.8 Mac I too miss the fact that this platform has been abandoned but OSX 10.6.8, in Windows terms, is like running XP. There are also significant changes/improvements that have happened since the 12.0 release that are worth upgrading for.

If you have access to a more modern system somewhere I would still recommend that you give Houdini another try.