peja_ Posted April 1, 2008 Share Posted April 1, 2008 Hi all, I am all new to Houdini. I am following the tutorials from sidefx website, but i have a problem. I loaded up a scene - its a simple one: a grid, a few boxes, a sphere and a cone. Then I added (as the tutorial says) an environment light, added a camera and from that icon in the lower left corner i choosed "view mantra". All i got is a big green surface (every part where is geometry is green) and the rest is black. I tried different lighs, but the result is same. Can anyone help me? Thanks Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
stevenong Posted April 1, 2008 Share Posted April 1, 2008 Hi, First of all, welcome to od[force] and Houdini. What Houdini version, OS and graphics card are you using? When mplay comes up, can you type "a" and do you see the Alpha channel? Also, can you change the colour of the environment light to red and the render should be mostly red. If you're still having issues, type 'd' in mplay to open the Display Options, click on Video Card Options..., select Best Compatibility, close and hit Accept. What do you get? Please let us know how it goes. Cheers! steven Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
peja_ Posted April 1, 2008 Author Share Posted April 1, 2008 It is Houdini 9, Windows XP SP2, GeForce PCI-E 5750. When i press "a" all turns black, then i press it again and it turns blue (all blue, just like the green stuff, but blue) When i change the light color, render is still green. But when I'm going through the channels, or what Houdini calls them the planes (red, green, blue), "the green" may switch to red/blue (i didnt noticed any rule about this, i think its random - every time different... When i press "d" and go for Best Compatibility i get the same results... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jason Posted April 1, 2008 Share Posted April 1, 2008 To make certain its an MPlay problem, could you try render to an image (.jpg format, probably) and view that image with another viewing program? (ie, dont render to "ip", render to "somefile.jpg") Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
peja_ Posted April 1, 2008 Author Share Posted April 1, 2008 Ok, so i changed the "Output Picture" in mantra properties to $HIP/$F4.tif first, and when i rendered that, it was all black. Then i manually renamed it to $HIP/$F4.jpeg (since i dont have it in dropdown menu) and it was rendered ok! It looks just like in the tutorial video. So, what should i do about this "Mplay"? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
stevenong Posted April 1, 2008 Share Posted April 1, 2008 Hi peja, Maybe you can try to update your graphics drivers to see if it helps? However, not sure why you can't render out .tifs. Can you post the specific build here? You can find it in Help menu > About Houdini. If you can, why don't you try to update to Houdini 9.1 and see if it helps with the .tif output? Cheers! steven Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
peja_ Posted April 1, 2008 Author Share Posted April 1, 2008 I installed latest graphic drivers and I have two new colors! Cyan and yellow! I think I'm gonna start crying now. Build: 9.0.794 As for 9.1, I'm gonna try that tommorow... Thanks for all the help. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jason Posted April 2, 2008 Share Posted April 2, 2008 Ok, so i changed the "Output Picture" in mantra properties to $HIP/$F4.tif first, and when i rendered that, it was all black. Yeah, you can only render .pic, .rat (both proprietary formats) and .jpg from Apprentice. You have to run a licensed copy of Houdini to render TIFF files, or any other format. Try 9.1, I think it'll solve a lot of your problems... well, I hope it does:) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
stevenong Posted April 2, 2008 Share Posted April 2, 2008 Jason is right. I forgot about the image formats you can render out from Apprentice. The best is to use .picnc so you won't get watermark in your render. Cheers! steven Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
peja_ Posted April 2, 2008 Author Share Posted April 2, 2008 (edited) Yeah, you can only render .pic, .rat (both proprietary formats) and .jpg from Apprentice. You have to run a licensed copy of Houdini to render TIFF files, or any other format.Try 9.1, I think it'll solve a lot of your problems... well, I hope it does:) We have a misunderstanding here I think. Actually, I made a mistake. I was looking in Output Picture, and there isnt any .jpeg, but in the other dropdown menu, Output Device I can choose .jpeg, .tiff, .png and few more... So in MPlay, no matter what extension I choose, I get one-color-image (it is random what color it is as much as I noticed), but if in Output Picture I choose Sequence of .tif files and then manually rename it to Sequence of .jpeg files I get image i want. I'm currently downloading 9.1 to see if it is ok in that version... edit: It's still not working...Can this be a hardware problem? Edited April 2, 2008 by peja_ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
peja_ Posted April 2, 2008 Author Share Posted April 2, 2008 PROBLEM SOLVED!!! In mantra properties, under output tab "Quantization" was set to "16 bit float". After changing it to "32 bit float" I am getting normaln renders in MPlay. I have no idea what is this all about, I'm just happy its working now Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jason Posted April 2, 2008 Share Posted April 2, 2008 PROBLEM SOLVED!!!In mantra properties, under output tab "Quantization" was set to "16 bit float". After changing it to "32 bit float" I am getting normaln renders in MPlay. I have no idea what is this all about, I'm just happy its working now Huh, I'm surprised that the Best Compatbility option didn't work then - since it activates the "Display All Images At 8bit" should be the fastest. Perhaps, for some reason, your video card/drivers doesn't like 8bit image planes?! Crazy... But I'm glad you're up and running... perhaps a better answer will arise some time. I'm going to add a "(Solved)" to this topic title anyway, if you don't mind. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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