Hi community!

As our number of otl files grow, I am wondering what is the recommended approach for setting up houdini.env files to properly load them. We are ideally hoping to move the OTL files to subfolders based on the tool they serve, but (correct me if I am wrong) adding a path to the Houdini.env does not mean that your subfolders in that path will be added.

What is the best way to handle that, so that we do not have to modify and redeploy our env file any time a new tool is added?

thank you!

Hi ,


OS and custom otl paths

You can add custom search paths to the houdini.env file and also add statements to alter and change features within Houdini.


Otl’s choice 1 : - create a folder named “otls” and place it in your houdini $home directory.This folder will then get picked up when Houdini starts up. An example path would be /sideeast/houdini12/otls


Otls choice 2 : is to create a custom path in the houdini.env file. This file path in osx is :- Users/Library/Preferences/houdini/9.5/houdini.env .

Then add this path HOUDINI_OTLSCAN_PATH=/Volumes/Macintosh_HD/Houdini_mproj/otls;&;


Or try this in H12

HOUDINI_OTLSCAN_PATH= $HOME/houdini10.0/otls
myfoovolume/myfoo_projects/otlsotherDisk/more/otls/:$HFS/houdini/otls


In a shell you can print the current values of all Houdini environment variables using hconfig -a

rob

thank you circus monkey! It looks like in that case, redeployment of my env file everytime that there is a change (to the artist) is a must.

on that note, is there a way to do what you have here, but with shelves? say I create a shelf and I want to put it in a central location for people to be able to access it. Is there like a HOUDINI_SHELF_SCANPATH?

Personally I'm of the mindset to just leave them all in one folder. It seems over complicated to be having otls in sub folders based on what tool they are related to. To me it makes more sense to just name the files in a consistent way as to make it readily apparent what is related to what.

HOUDINI_TOOLBAR_PATH
The search path for factory and custom shelves and shelf tools (i.e.,
shelf files). The shelf files are searched for and loaded when Houdini
starts. They can define new tools that appear in the TAB menu or new
groupings of tools (ie, toolbars or shelves) which can be displayed in the
shelving area (usually, just below the main menu).

thank you circus monkey! It looks like in that case, redeployment of my env file everytime that there is a change (to the artist) is a must.

Surely if this is for a large array of machines you should have them all pointing to one env file or a server somewhere.
I would get some solid experts in to set up your network and shot environment.

rob

thank you for all the feedback guys! This is great stuff

Hi guys

what would be the way in the env setting to automatally load a custom Panel Tab ? Not a shelf, I mean a panel tab...
Thanks!

I got my entire pipeline deployable from a git repo that holds, among other things, all my custom houdini stuff.

The bat file below, that's in the root of the repo with sets a few system environent vars, most importantly the 'HOUDINI_PACKAGE_DIR' to a folder in the the local clone of the repo. Houdini will automatically look there for additional packages to load.


In that packages dir are some json files that include things from the repo, like an additional user folder that has all the shelf/otl/python libs and all other customisations.

So on a fresh computer I clone the repo, run bat file and then simply start Houdini. I then have all my custom stuff, including shelfs, desktop layouts and what not available. And since this all comes from a git repo is very easy to push updates and keep things in sync.

And the other nice thing is that this is complete seperated from the houdini install and thus survives any updates, even mayor. It also has some conditional includes based on version info and some nice stuff using tokens. Redshift for example is included for the current houdini version by using the version as token in the filename path in the json package.

My houdini env file is completely empty. Packages are the way forward.

Thanks you Jonathan!