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Houdini on Multiple Displays


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I've recently bought another monitor and I'd like to use it with Houdini. I've read that Houdini doesn't like negative workspace. From what I understand that means that the monitors should be aligned from left to right, with the left one being the main one. Okay, I've done that and created some 2 screen workspaces.

 

However, things are acting very weird. Some things just don't update properly in the viewport. Sometimes they disappear. I've had nulls look like a squigly line instead of the normal cross.

 

Switching from the 2 screen workspace to the default "build" and then back sometimes helps. Sometimes I have to close the program and restart it.

 

Is this a 2 monitor problem or a card problem?... or open gl?

 

I have a AMD Radeon 5770 on a Mac booted into win 7.

 

Thank you for any heads up on this issue as I'm new to debugging this sort of thing.

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Last time I tried Boot Camp (circa 2010) I had to use some crappy Apple drivers for all the hardware including the graphics card and the official drivers from the AMD/ATI website wouldn't work. The drivers from Apple were crazy buggy in everything I tried and I gave up on Boot Camp completely because of it. If you have a Mac I'd suggest just using Houdini in OS X. I ran Houdini on Mac for a while with the Radeon HD 5770 and dual monitors and while it was a slow piece of crap it wasn't buggy on OS X.

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 The drivers from Apple were crazy buggy in everything I tried and I gave up on Boot Camp completely because of it. 

 

That's interesting, I wonder if it still applies - running Linux on a Mac runs all the proprietary drivers, and I thought Windows did too last time I ran it.  Seems to be running at full speed, which is generally faster than on OsX :)

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Last time I tried Boot Camp (circa 2010) I had to use some crappy Apple drivers for all the hardware including the graphics card and the official drivers from the AMD/ATI website wouldn't work. The drivers from Apple were crazy buggy in everything I tried and I gave up on Boot Camp completely because of it. If you have a Mac I'd suggest just using Houdini in OS X. I ran Houdini on Mac for a while with the Radeon HD 5770 and dual monitors and while it was a slow piece of crap it wasn't buggy on OS X.

 

Well, I'm not sure the "slow piece of crap" endorsement is swaying enough to make me yearn for the OS Lion instead of Bootcamping it :D

 

All joking aside, this would put a major cramp in my workflow as I have most things on the Win7 side. I've been able to install the official AMD drivers without a problem and even the original Bootcamp defaults were okay.

 

I could be wrong, but from what I know, with Bootcamp, the Mac should be close to just another PC so long as you use the Win drivers for things such as the video card.

 

I've run Open GL tests and other graphic apps, and they're rock solid on the 2 monitors. Only Houdini misbehaves.

 

At first there was an issue that I have my monitors backwards from what H recommends. The right monitor was 1 and the left was 2. I changed them around and that seemed to fix things quite a bit. But there are still inconsistencies.

 

I'm looking into purchasing a more solid card - Quadro k5000... but I'm dreading finding out that for $1600 things aren't any better with these bugs :(

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I have a two monitor setup - win 7 + h13 - and everything seems to work/update fine

 

What's your onscreen setup like. I have my parameters, network and the rest on the left, while the right is reserved mostly for the scene view. One of the problems I face is that sometimes when I do something like animating a character or changing something in the left side, my right side doesn't update.

 

EG: I translate something by 20 in Y - in the scene viewport nothing happens. If I save the scene and restart it, I see the update in the viewport. That's just a small example.

 

Most of the time it works, but sometimes I get the feeling there's desync between the left and right hand side.

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What's your onscreen setup like. I have my parameters, network and the rest on the left, while the right is reserved mostly for the scene view. One of the problems I face is that sometimes when I do something like animating a character or changing something in the left side, my right side doesn't update.

 

EG: I translate something by 20 in Y - in the scene viewport nothing happens. If I save the scene and restart it, I see the update in the viewport. That's just a small example.

 

Most of the time it works, but sometimes I get the feeling there's desync between the left and right hand side.

 

It sounds like you are in Manual update mode. There's a menu in the lower-right corner in the playbar that normally says "Auto" which may have been changed to Manual. Nothing will update in this mode unless you click the refresh button beside it.

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It sounds like you are in Manual update mode. There's a menu in the lower-right corner in the playbar that normally says "Auto" which may have been changed to Manual. Nothing will update in this mode unless you click the refresh button beside it.

 

 

Nope - I'm definitelly on Auto Update. Everything works fine if I have 1 screen desktops. It just craps out with 2 screen layouts.

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I run H13 with a dual-monitor setup on both Linux and Windows 7; it took a few tests of driver installs to find stable drivers but it works.  There are definitely odd display issues I see on CentOS Linux but in general it is usable

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I run H13 with a dual-monitor setup on both Linux and Windows 7; it took a few tests of driver installs to find stable drivers but it works.  There are definitely odd display issues I see on CentOS Linux but in general it is usable

 

Just to be clear... you're saying it works on win, linux... or both?

Edited by noodlehead
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