Could not find ai.dll & QT platform plugin could not be initialized.

[manuel_hm]

Hello, 

I am trying to get arnold installed but running into some issues (houdini/solaris). To give a bit of context, I do also have vray installed and was getting issues rendering with vray when arnold was installed both renderers setup using the regular houdini.env (meaning both renderers loaded in houdini solaris. The issue I was getting was that arnold would render fine but vray would not - shaders wouldnt work somehow).

I did tests uninstalling Arnold and vray would work fine again (btw I am using houdini 19.5.435)

Therefor I did a bit of research and decided to move onto using packages with json configurations and see if that helps.

so this is what worked and what didn't (reason of my thread)

using packages arnold.json, I can see that vray now works (didnt change anything besides using json to load arnold vs env file) but I am running into some issues with arnold:

I can see the arnold tab on top of houdini, also arnold tab on lights etc. But when I try to bring a material into a material library arnold builder wont show which I guess its related to the ai.dll issue. 

(current arnold installed version is: htoa-6.1.4.1_rc2f7eb9_houdini-19.5.435_windows)

This is my current arnold.json file:

{

    "env": [

        {

            "PATH": "C:\Users\User\htoa\htoa-6.1.4.1_rc2f7eb9_houdini-19.5.435\htoa-6.1.4.1_rc2f7eb9_houdini-19.5.435\scripts\bin",

            "method": "append"

        }

    ],

    "path": "C:\Users\User\htoa\htoa-6.1.4.1_rc2f7eb9_houdini-19.5.435\htoa-6.1.4.1_rc2f7eb9_houdini-19.5.435"

}

and I am getting this in houdini console:

Could not find ai.dll
OS error: Could not find module 'ai.dll' (or one of its dependencies). Try using the full path with constructor syntax.

I did check and found that another user had a similar ish issue and was related to VC_redist.x64.exe not being installed. I checked the json path and it seems to be pointing to the right direction of the .dll but somehow not loading it? I did install vc_redistx64, restarted the machine and retry opening houdini but I do get the same missing ai.dll error.

As for the second issue when I try to open the license manager I am getting prompted with: 

this application could not be initialized, no qt platform plugin.

Not sure if both are related or not honestly. Do you have any thoughts onto why this happens and how can I fix it? It is a big headache to try to make multiple renders work with houdini solaris seems like.

any help would be appreciated. Thanks.

-Manuel

[manuel_hm]

I managed to get Arnold to load using:

{

    "env": [

      {

        "HOUDINI_PATH":

        [

          {

              "value" : "C:/Users/User/htoa/htoa-6.1.4.1_rc2f7eb9_houdini-19.0.720.py2/htoa-6.1.4.1_rc2f7eb9_houdini-${HOUDINI_VERSION}.py2;&",

              "method" : "append"

          }

        ]

      },

      {

        "PATH": [

          {

              "value" : "$PATH;C:/Users/User/htoa/htoa-6.1.4.1_rc2f7eb9_houdini-19.0.720.py2/htoa-6.1.4.1_rc2f7eb9_houdini-${HOUDINI_VERSION}.py2/scripts/bin",

              "method" : "append"

          }

        ]

      }

    ]

  }

(I did change to different houdini version 19.0.720 as a test using arnold htoa-6.1.4.1_rc2f7eb9_houdini-19.0.720.py2_windows)

I tried installing Arnold first and everything loads correctly but as soon as vray is also installed there are conflicts starting, not sure at this point if this is a vray or arnold issue.... but it does seem that the problem lies in a python conflict or something like that.

I tried installing Vray and pointing to python27 but still do get a load of errors like this on the houdini console:

Traceback (most recent call last):
File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
File "C:/PROGRA~1/SIDEEF~1/HOUDIN~1.720/houdini/python2.7libs\husd\pluginmanager.py", line 83, in __init__
reverse = True )
File "C:/PROGRA~1/SIDEEF~1/HOUDIN~1.720/houdini/python2.7libs\husd\pluginmanager.py", line 28, in __init__
pathvar = 'HOUDINI_HUSDPLUGINS_PATH' )
File "C:/PROGRA~1/SIDEEF~1/HOUDIN~1.720/houdini/python2.7libs\pluginutils.py", line 193, in runFunctions
pathvar=pathvar):
File "C:/PROGRA~1/SIDEEF~1/HOUDIN~1.720/houdini/python2.7libs\pluginutils.py", line 137, in _findFunctions
module = _cacheLoad(filepath, silent=True)
File "C:/PROGRA~1/SIDEEF~1/HOUDIN~1.720/houdini/python2.7libs\pluginutils.py", line 41, in _cacheLoad
obj = loadModule(filepath, silent=silent)
File "C:/PROGRA~1/SIDEEF~1/HOUDIN~1.720/houdini/python2.7libs\pluginutils.py", line 66, in loadModule
exec (code_obj, module.__dict__)
File "C:/Program Files/Chaos Group/V-Ray/Houdini 19.0.720/vfh_home/husdplugins\shadertranslators\vfh_usd.py", line 15, in <module>
import vfh_py
File "C:\PROGRA~1\SIDEEF~1\HOUDIN~1.720\python27\lib\site-packages-forced\shiboken2\files.dir\shibokensupport\__feature__.py", line 142, in _import
return original_import(name, *args, **kwargs)
ImportError: No module named vfh_py

as a test if I remove arnold.json and arnold doesnt get picked houdini loads vray fine, same if I uninstall vray houdini opens and arnold appears correctly. Not sure exactly why arent both loading properly. 

if someone has any clue, please let me know, I've tried many different environment variables, package configurations etc, I still do get issues when trying to have both vray and arnold installed in the same houdini version in solaris.