So I am building a custom shelf tool and would really like to have some controls pop up in the little tool bar at the top of the scene view much like the ‘bones from curve’ tool does, but after a lot of searching I haven't found anything about how to do this. Anyone know how to or can point me in the right direction?

Thanks!

I have been looking around for details on how to do this and still nothing. Anyone?

For HDAs, you can only control which parameters show up in there. Edit the parameter in the Operator Type Properties window: Show Parm In = … + Toolbox.

Thanks for the reply edward. So I have seen that you can put HDA parameters onto the toolbox, unfortunately my tool just runs some code to make bones from multiple curves, so it doesn't have a physical HDA I can attach parameters to.

However Houdini's built in ‘bones from curve’ tool seems to do just fine without an HDA node and somehow keeps the tool active until you change from the tool cursor. I tried hunting down the tool's code and so far haven't found anything useful.

The Bones from Curve tool (amongst others) are written in C++, so it has more abilities than if you were just doing a python shelf tool.

Interesting. Is there any documentation on how to build shelf tools in HDK?