I am trying to run 9.5.170 0n my mac pro, and I get the same “icon” problem( where there are none), an the whole software is non-responsive.
My mac is 64 bit leopard 10.5.4 and has 4 cores and 4 gigs of RAM!
I was running the 9.5.155 version on the same machine with no problems.
The machine specs are as follows:
Hardware Overview:

Model Name: Mac Pro
Model Identifier: MacPro1,1
Processor Name: Dual-Core Intel Xeon
Processor Speed: 3 GHz
Number Of Processors: 2
Total Number Of Cores: 4
L2 Cache (per processor): 4 MB
Memory: 4 GB
Bus Speed: 1.33 GHz
Boot ROM Version: MP11.005C.B08
SMC Version: 1.7f10

Attached is what the screen looks like. I get a ton of errors like this on startup:

macintosh:Resources theovandernoot$ houdini(12980,0x7fff70723dc0) malloc: reference count underflow for 0x80036be00, break on auto_refcount_underflow_error to debug.
dyld: Library not loaded: /usr/X11R6/lib/libSM.6.dylib
Referenced from: /Library/Frameworks/Houdini.framework/Versions/9.5.170/Resources/hsvg/hsvg-real
Reason: no suitable image found. Did find:
/usr/X11R6/lib/libSM.6.dylib: mach-o, but wrong architecture
dyld: Library not loaded: /usr/X11R6/lib/libSM.6.dylib
Referenced from: /Library/Frameworks/Houdini.framework/Versions/9.5.170/Resources/hsvg/hsvg-real
Reason: no suitable image found. Did find:
/usr/X11R6/lib/libSM.6.dylib: mach-o, but wrong architecture
dyld: Library not loaded: /usr/X11R6/lib/libSM.6.dylib


…
…

and so on.

I know at one point apple released a buggy “security Update” (v1.0)
which was bad. I am considering installing v 1.1 from:

http://www.apple.com/support/downloads/securityupdate2005007v11macosx1042client.html [apple.com]

but the installer won't let me. Houdini has been inoperative for 2 weeks now, and I'm really tired of this. Does anybody out there have any suggestions ?????

Thanks in advance,

Theo

From your error message, here's what seems to be going wrong.

Houdini comes with a small program called hsvg which we use to convert our icons from vector graphics in SVG format into bitmaps in png format. Houdini does this on the first run.

Unfortunately, the hsvg program currently depends on X11 (we'd like to fix that). There seems to be some problem with X11 on your system.

Could you please run this shell command in Terminal and post the results here:

lipo -info /usr/X11R6/lib/libSM.6.dylib

I'm sorry about your problems. We'll try to get you up and running ASAP.

Was this issue ever resolved? I am thinking of getting almost the exact same machine with almost the exact configuration, specifically to run Houdini. I was also wondering if getting 8 GB's of memory is worth it or should I get Apple's $2800.00 Nvidia card with 4 GB's of memory instead. I hope this gets resolved soon, that is, if it isn't already. ? Continue the awesome work SESI!

here is a similar issue but with different libraries:
http://www.sidefx.com/index.php?option=com_forum&Itemid=172&page=viewtopic&t=13285 [sidefx.com]

From other feedback we've received, it looks like some installs of Leopard are missing the 64-bit versions of several libraries. This may be caused by an Apple update of some kind. Houdini is 64-bit and cannot work without the 64-bit versions of the system libraries. Or perhaps they are not always installed on laptops to save size.

So, you may need to re-install OS X Leopard from your DVD's. I would recommend doing an “Archive Install” which should be available by clicking on the Options button on the screen of the OS X installer where you choose which volume to install to. The Archive Install will preserve your system settings and installed applications.

That's all I can recommend at this point…

i'm using macbook pro intel 2.5 ghz, and had this icon kind problem. It was leopard 10.5.4 (in fact i couldnt' start the x11 app, so the x11 was broken). Then i did the archive install (so downgraded back to 10.5.2), it fixed the problem. Now i can start houdini without problem. Is this a problem of upgrading to 10.5.4??
Anyone tried with 10.5.5? any experiences?

clay~

Running very smoothly on 10.5.5

I had this problem under Snow Leopard of icons missing and errors in Console referencing missing /usr/X11R6/lib/libSM.6.dylib

My X11.app in /Applications/Utilities wasn't working (damaged package) so I downloaded and installed the latest X11 revision from http://xquartz.macosforge.org, [xquartz.macosforge.org] installed and rebooted.

The new XQuartz install filepath is at /usr/X11/, so I used a symbolic link in Terminal to the new file path:

ln -s /usr/X11 /usr/X11R6

It's all working now - I hope this helps someone out there struggling with this issue.