I finally managed to get Redshift and Octane Render to run side by side in Houdini's Solaris context. However, it still crashes the app regularly.
Generally speaking I can get Octane to behave predictably if I follow the steps below:
- - If I have Redshift running, I need to select "Pause Render" (from dropdown menu)
- - Then select "Houdini GL"(from dropdown menu)
- - Then select "Reset Redshift" (from dropdown menu)
- - Then select "Octane" (from dropdown menu)
This usually starts Octane normally inside Solaris. If I don't follow these steps, Octane either doesn't fire up properly (the viewport remains 'empty') or Houdini crashes.
If I run Octane and then want to switch to another engine, e.g. back to Redshift, I have to follow the same steps.
- - Select "Pause Render" while running Octane (from dropdown menu)
- - Then select "Houdini GL"(from dropdown menu)
- - Then select "Reset Octane" (from dropdown menu)
- - Then select "Redshift" (from dropdown menu)
As you can tell, this requires quite a lot of clicking. If running Redshift on its own, I can happily 'hot-swap' engines without risking any crashes, which makes for a very quick workflow. But once you add Octane to the mix, things get unstable. And even if I follow the above steps exactly, it still happens every couple of 'swaps' that Octane will get stuck while loading, causing Houdini to crash.
It'd be great, if you could look into that.