Sunday, October 4, 2015

Houdini Start-Up Crashed on Render Node

AFAIK, Houdini could not start its main application (GUI) without OpenGL enabled graphics card. Hence if you are trying to start it in a render node with ASPEED on-board graphics, it is impossible. All you can do is to run the render using CLI.

As for user encounters the same issue, if you are using Nvidia graphics card, you would need to switch the XORG graphics driver to Nvidia proprietary driver. You can do it at:

Menu > Settings > Software and Update > Additional Drivers

Sometimes the latest driver may not work well. So you may have to tried different version to get it work.

Tips: To get a clearer picture of why Houdini failed to start, instead of running it from software menu, you can run it from terminal. The error message will be more readable than the crashed dump file.