• The left pane shows a tree of contexts.

  Each hotkey exists in a context. The same key can be assigned to different actions in different contexts. A hotkey in a higher-level context (for example, the top level “Houdini” context) will be overridden by the same hotkey on a more specific context, for example, the geometry viewer’s Select tool).

  Some hotkeys, such as ⌦ Del, are assigned to similar actions in many different contexts.

• The middle pane shows a list of actions in the currently selected context.

• The right pane shows a description of the currently selected action and a list of hotkeys assigned to the action.

• Across the bottom is a keyboard schematic showing what keys are currently assigned in the selected context.

When you assign a hotkey to an action, if the key is already assigned in a higher (more general) or lower (more specific) context, Houdini will display a warning icon next to the key in the hotkey list.

When you select hotkey, the editor displays a message explaining the potential conflict.

Conflicts are often OK. There are many situations where you don’t care that a key in a specific context overrides the same key in a more general context.

For example, if you're working in a modeling tool and not doing animation, you might assign the K key and not worry that you're overriding the Set Keyframe key.

However, if you want to resolve the conflict by editing the keys, you have several choices:

• To remove or change the hotkey from the selected action, click the Delete button next to the hotkey.

• To remove the hotkey from the other action the key is assigned to, click Remove other in the conflict message.

• To change the hotkey on the other action the key is assigned to, click Edit other to jump to the other action in the editor.

1. In the hotkey editor, filter for radial, or browse the tree on the left to select the context containing the radial menu.

   • For the 3D viewer, the context is Houdini ▸ Panes ▸ Geometry Viewers.

   • For the network editor, the context is Houdini ▸ Panes ▸ Network Editor.

   The context contains actions corresponding to the radial menus defined in the radial menu editor (Edit ▸ Radial Menus).

   If you want to create a new radial menu on a key, first create the new menu in the radial menu editor. Then come back to the hotkey editor to assign it to a key.

2. In the middle pane, select the radial menu you want to assign a key.

3. In the right pane, double-click the Add row and press the key you want to assign to the radial menu.

4. Click Accept to save the change to the keymap.

• The keymap is the set of all assigned hotkeys in the application. Houdini ships with a write-protected default keymap in the install directory.

• If you make any changes to the defaults, the editor stores the modified key map in your preferences directory.

• You can branch off a new custom keymap using ▸ Save As.

• To switch to a different key map, click the Keymap dropdown menu in the top-left corner of the hotkey editor and select the map you want to switch to.

• The default keymap targets a US keyboard layout. Some default bindings don’t work on keyboard layouts that don’t have the required unmodified keys.

import keymaputils

keymaputils.applyMappingToKeymapFile("/path/to/input.keymap",
                                     keymaputils.mappingLegacyShiftedUS,
                                     "/path/to/output.keymap")

import keymaputils

# NB: A mapping to an empty string removes any bindings using that key.
mapping = {
    '`' : '²',
    '1' : '&',
    '2' : 'É',
    '3' : '"',
    '4' : '\'',
    '5' : '(',
    '6' : '-',
    '7' : 'È',
    '8' : '_',
    '9' : 'Ç',
    '0' : 'À',
    '-' : ')',

    '[' : '',
    ']' : '$',
    ';' : 'M',
    '\'': 'Ù',
    'M' : ',',
    ',' : ';',
    '.' : ':',
    '/' : '!'
}

keymaputils.applyMappingToKeymapFile("/path/to/input.keymap2",
                                     mapping,
                                     "/path/to/output.keymap2")

Starting in 20.5, Houdini uses a new hotkey resolution and context system. In the old system (20.0 and earlier), contexts are categories that contain actions and these actions contain the key bindings. In the new hotkey system:

• Categories are containers for the action definitions.

• Contexts are containers for key bindings to the actions.

Hotkey resolution now happens against all the key bindings in a set of active contexts rather than as a consequence of independent comparisons against individual bindings spread out across multiple key event handlers. A key event handler is a generic term for something that processes key events in Houdini, such as a widget or a callback. You can also bind a given action in multiple contexts. For example, a key can trigger a handle action in one viewer state context while a different key triggers that same action in another viewer state context.

Houdini 20.5 uses a new set of configuration, keymap, and keymap override file formats. The keymap files use a .keymap2 extension instead of .keymap. Houdini doesn’t automatically convert .keymap files from earlier versions into 20.5 .keymap2 files, but you can import your old key bindings from these files with a python script to avoid having to manually recreate them.

• Browsing for actions in the context tree is not very useful. It’s easier to find an action using the filter box in the hotkey editor, or by ⌃ Ctrl + Alt + ⇧ Shift + clicking an item in the user interface.

  Note

  The current legacy organization of contexts is often counter-intuitive. We hope to re-organize the contexts in a future version.

• To restore the selected action to its factory default hotkeys, click ▸ Reset ▸ Command.

• To restore all actions in the selected context to their factory default hotkeys, click ▸ Reset ▸ Context.

• To restore the entire keymap to factory defaults, click ▸ Reset ▸ All.