"Render View" remains black.

[gianmarcoSVDN9]

Hi friends,
I tried to install HtoA for Houdini, but I have problems with the "Render View" where the screen remains black.
On the contrary, the render saves the image correctly with "Render to Disk". Even in Solaris everything seems to work regularly.
I tried to install version 6.3.3.0 and 6.3.3.1 both on Houdini 20.5.278 and Houdini 20.0.688 and both give me the same problem.
I disabled both the Firewall and the Antivirus.
Does anyone have any idea on how to solve the problem? thanks

Gianmarco

AMD Ryzen 9, 7950X, 128 gb Ram. NVidia 3080TI and 2080TI

[miro.digital]

What I've read in one of the previous posts, the issue has been logged as bug - fails to load driver_houdini because it can't find the Houdini libraries correctly. I have the same issue, waiting for a fix.

HTOA 6.3.3.1 for H20.0.724 works for me though, you could give it a try.

[gianmarcoSVDN9]

Hi Miro and thanks for the reply.
I tried to install HTOA 6.3.3.1 on H20.0.724 but it gives me the same problem. The even stranger thing is that I installed an old version of Arnold, 6.3.1.1 on H20.0.688 that when I tried it several months ago worked, but now it gives the same error.
So I'm not sure if the problem is just a bug in the latest versions of Arnold.
I'll keep trying during these holidays.
Hi and thanks
G.

ps: sorry for my english

[tom_minor-arnold]

Hey,

Which platform are you on? I assume Windows or Linux given the Ryzen.

(The ticket Miro is referring to is HTOA-2706  - but it's OSX specific and that bug isn't happening on Windows/Linux)

Do you see any errors on the ROP or in the terminal output?

[miro.digital]

Hey @tom_minor-arnold, I'm on Windows 11 and actually IPR does stay black for me as well with H20.5.278 like Gianmarco mentioned. Renders fine to disk and works in Solaris, but no love anywhere else - H20.0.724 works fine.

Attached a log, might help.

Thanks, Chris.

[peterDTE7K]

Tom, this bug is on all platforms. I can confirm windows and linux on my end. 
-Peter

[tom_minor-arnold]

That is strange - I can 100% repro the OSX error (which is specific to the dylib rpaths), but I've tested a fresh install of 6.3.3.1 on my Windows machine and the render view is working for me.

Just to sanity check your install, are you using the htoa.json package or houdini.env to setup the environment? I'm trying to figure out what could be different on our machines

[miro.digital]

Using htoa.json package here.

[Stephen.Blair]

---

@miro.digital wrote:

Hey @tom_minor-arnold, I'm on Windows 11 and actually IPR does stay black for me as well with H20.5.278 like Gianmarco mentioned. Renders fine to disk and works in Solaris, but no love anywhere else - H20.0.724 works fine.

Attached a log, might help.

Thanks, Chris.

---

There's no errors in the log, and very little log. What was the verbosity level?

It works fine on my Windows 11 machine. A debug-level log for an empty scene is attached.

[miro.digital]

Hey @Stephen.Blair, that's actually a debug-level log. At least that's what I set for log verbosity. Here's another one attached, but that's the same I guess. It doesn't really do or create anything as the screen remains black, that might be the reason it contains no info.

If I render to disk, the log is much more detailed, attached this one too.

[Stephen.Blair]

---

@miro.digital wrote:

Hey @Stephen.Blair, that's actually a debug-level log. At least that's what I set for log verbosity. Here's another one attached, but that's the same I guess. It doesn't really do or create anything as the screen remains black, that might be the reason it contains no info.

If I render to disk, the log is much more detailed, attached this one too.

---

Something is really going wrong. It's like the houdini driver (the driver that writes the pixels to the Render View) totally fails and closes down. 

00:00:01   418MB         | [hick] driver_open: [-3 3]: -3 is_open 1
00:00:03   418MB         |  
00:00:03   418MB         | releasing resources
00:00:03   286MB         |  [hick] node_finish

I never see that "node_finish" message, not in ten years of HtoA cases.

Can you get a Process Monitor log ? That might provide a clue.

• Download Process Monitor and extract it to a folder
  https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/processmonitor.aspx
• Start Process Monitor
• Start capturing events (CTRL+E or the play icon)
• Start the Render View
• After the non-render finishes, go back to Process Monitor and stop capturing events
• Save the Process Monitor log to a .PML file
• Zip up the log and attach it here, or send it (or upload to a file sharing site like Dropbox or Google Drive)

[miro.digital]

Uploaded @Stephen.Blair at https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/8xa00hzr8jqor6b8ue2s7/Logfile.zip?rlkey=2ssxgwdvxky0k95bj7uozt99h&dl=...

[miro.digital]

Hey @Stephen.Blair, checking in if we have any update or temp solution to this issue. I was hoping for a fix with the latest update, but issue remains the same.

Thanks!

[Stephen.Blair]

The only time I've seen this kind of thing in an Arnold log, it's been a Houdini licensing issue.

driver_houdini is in the list of lights and objects, so that eliminates that possibility (sometimes in rare situations, the driver isn't available and the render fails).

00:00:01   237MB         | there are 1 light and 2 objects:
00:00:01   237MB         |       1 persp_camera
00:00:01   237MB         |       1 skydome_light
00:00:01   237MB         |       2 utility
00:00:01   237MB         |       1 imager_denoiser_oidn
00:00:01   237MB         |       2 box_filter
00:00:01   237MB         |       1 gaussian_filter
00:00:01   237MB         |       1 closest_filter
00:00:01   237MB         |       1 polymesh
00:00:01   237MB         |       2 list_aggregate
00:00:01   237MB         |       3 color_manager_ocio
00:00:01   237MB         |       1 driver_houdini
00:00:01   237MB         |  
00:00:01   237MB         | rendering image at 1280 x 720, -3 AA samples
00:00:01   237MB         |   AA samples max    <disabled>
00:00:01   237MB         |   AA sample clamp   <disabled>
00:00:01   237MB         |   diffuse           samples  2 / depth  1
00:00:01   237MB         |   specular          samples  2 / depth  1
00:00:01   237MB         |   transmission      samples  2 / depth  8
00:00:01   237MB         |   volume indirect   <disabled by depth>
00:00:01   237MB         |   total                          depth 10
00:00:01   237MB         |   bssrdf            samples  2
00:00:01   237MB         |   light             <using per light samples>
00:00:01   237MB         |   transparency      depth 10
00:00:01   237MB         | full scene initialize (13 nodes)
00:00:01   237MB         |  [hick] node_initialize
00:00:01   238MB         |  creating root object list ...
00:00:01   238MB         | full scene initialize done in 0:00.00 (multithreaded)
00:00:01   239MB         | full scene update (14 nodes)
00:00:01   240MB         |  [hick] node_update
00:00:01   241MB         |  /obj/arnold_light1: skydome_light using 1 sample, 2 volume samples
00:00:01   266MB         |  [color_manager_ocio] ai_default_color_manager_ocio : using OCIO configuration file from the OCIO environment variable C:/PROGRA~1/SIDEEF~1/HOUDIN~1.278/packages/ocio/houdini-config-v2.1.0_aces-v1.3_ocio-v2.3.ocio
00:00:01   267MB         |  [OIDN]: Device Enum, Device 0 : NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090
00:00:01   267MB         |  [OIDN]: Device Enum, Device 1 : NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090
00:00:01   267MB         |  [OIDN]: Device Enum, Device 2 : AMD Ryzen Threadripper PRO 5975WX 32-Cores     
00:00:01   267MB         |  [OIDN]: gpu device 'NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090' created
00:00:01   341MB         |  [OIDN] /mat/arnold_default_imager/oidn_denoiser: using 'NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090' for denoising
00:00:01   342MB         |  scene bounds: (-0.5 -0.5 -0.5) -> (0.5 0.5 0.5)
00:00:01   342MB         | full scene update done in 0:00.23 (multithreaded)
00:00:01   342MB         | [light_sampler] Group 0: Total number of lights 1, sampled lights 0, fixed lights 1
00:00:01   342MB         | [light_sampler] Group 0: Took 0.000000 ms to build the tree
00:00:01   342MB         | [aov] parsing 2 output statements ...
00:00:01   365MB         | [aov] registered driver: "/out/arnold1:iprsocket" (driver_houdini)
00:00:01   365MB         | [aov]  * "RGBA" of type RGBA filtered by "/out/arnold1:gaussian_filter" (gaussian_filter)
00:00:01   365MB         | [aov]  * "ID" of type UINT filtered by "/out/arnold1:closest_filter:aov-1" (closest_filter)
00:00:01   365MB         | [aov] done preparing 6 AOVs for 4 outputs to 1 driver (0 deep AOVs)
00:00:01   369MB         | [imager] Overriding the fis_filter:fis_filter_width options with gaussian:2.000000 to improve quality for denoising with imager_denoiser_oidn
00:00:01   369MB         | FIS set to gaussian with width 2
00:00:01   420MB         | [hick] driver_open: [-3 3]: -3 is_open 1
00:00:03   420MB         |  
00:00:03   420MB         | releasing resources
00:00:03   287MB         |  [hick] node_finish
00:00:03   283MB         |   
00:00:03   283MB         |  releasing resources

[miro.digital]

Hey @Stephen.Blair, I changed from SideFX to local server, all fields green in the license administrator, but still doesn't work.

[william_banti75ELV]

Ive the same issue ?  Did you find à fix?

[gaetan_osman77]

has there been a fix to this issue? really frustrating to be spending and wasting an entire day with deadlines creeping up simple trying to fire up an IPR render. just like the others have mentioned, it renders fine in Solaris and to disk but regular IPR buffers endlessly with a black screen. Importing my scene to Solaris at this point would take to much time and rendering to disk without viewing my scene is working blind. I hope there is a solution to this, I've always been a huge fan of Arnold but been reluctant to update because I've noticed it always a case of "fix something by breaking something else".  Hope we can get some support from the Autodesk team 

[Stephen.Blair]

---

@gaetan_osman77 wrote:

has there been a fix to this issue? really frustrating to be spending and wasting an entire day with deadlines creeping up simple trying to fire up an IPR render. just like the others have mentioned, it renders fine in Solaris and to disk but regular IPR buffers endlessly with a black screen. Importing my scene to Solaris at this point would take to much time and rendering to disk without viewing my scene is working blind. I hope there is a solution to this, I've always been a huge fan of Arnold but been reluctant to update because I've noticed it always a case of "fix something by breaking something else".  Hope we can get some support from the Autodesk team 

---

If you have Houdini Indie and the RenderView is aborting with a Houdini licensing message:

No licenses could be found to run this application.
Please check for a valid license server host

https://www.sidefx.com/faq/question/render-error-no-licenses-could-be-found-to-run-this-application-...

Then there is no solution at the moment. It's not something to be fixed in HtoA, because it seems a Houdini licensing change. We're in contact with SideFX support about this.

[gaetan_osman77]

Hi Stephen, thanks for your reply. 

The link you provided didn't work for me, it says page not found. 

as for the rendering issue, currently the renderview won't throw an error, it'll just stay black indefinitely. could be that it eventually throws me an error but I let it run about 30 min and it would just buffer forever which at that point I just had to move forward and look for an alternative solution. 

I've now gone ahead and imported my scene into solaris where Arnold does seem to work. I do hope SideFx support, provides some solution to this, while it's great that it works in Solaris, we're not very familiar with Solaris which strains our production. still appreciate your insight, hoping for an update on this soon. Cheers 

[Stephen.Blair]

You'll see the error only if you can check the Arnold log (for example, in a Log Viewer pane). The RenderView will stay stuck on the "Generating scene..." message.