Same problem for me. I was so excited to play with Apprentice in this morning when I decided to give it a try. But all my hopes and excitment disappeared when I double click the .exe icon on my desktop. I tried everything including latest video card drivers.

One year ago, I downloaded it and had fun with it without any trouble or crash with my very same computer.

What did the programmers do to this software?

I can launch image viewer. But I am not that lucky when comes to launch the geo viewer and the master.

I can see the splash screen but when the software trries to load its visuals on the screens, the Hmaster.exe crashes.

I also read somewhere that GL enabled desktoprs do not work well with Houdini.

how can I see whether my desktop is GL enabled or not ?

If you can help me, You make me the happiest guy ever.

Best Regards;

Ozan

What OS, graphics card and driver version are you running?

I am currently running on Windows 7 64bit.

My graphic card is ATI Rodeon HD 4850 with its latest driver installed.

I will be tryşng the software on my office computer in a minute. I'll fill you in about the result.

OK guys;

I succesfully installed the Houdini Apprentice on my computer at work.

The configuration of the computer is very similar to my home PC.

However, there are only two differences:

1- Office computer has Vista 64bit

2- Office computer has an Nvidia graphic card.

The rest is just the same

The Catalyst 10.10 driver and beyond doesn't play well with Houdini. We've reported the issue to ATI/AMD, but I don't have word on any fixes. Apparently the 5000 and 6000 series cards work ok with Houdini, so it may take them some time to fix the issue (older cards, consumer driver).

In the meantime, install Catalyst 10.9 instead.

Thanks a lot. I knew that It was all about my relatively old graphic card.

I hope that they will be able to fix the problem in the future.

Ozan
I hope that they will be able to fix the problem in the future.

On ATI side this future will never come. Beleive me.

I constantly come across with that issue in my professional life.

Most of the CG softwares, especially the big ones always require us to have NVidia chipset so that we can work and get them run succesfully.

I think I should change my preference on GPU cards. ( Mudbox, Some game engines, Real time renderers ect. ect )