Is it possible to edit .hip files by hand or script ? Whenever I tried it I just get a corrupt header error message.
Is this some DRM mechanism ?

Since a hip file is basically a cpio file you need to use hexpand and hcollapse to expand the file out for editing and then collapse it back into a hip file.

if I just try to list the files in the archive with cpio -i -t < test.hipnc I get thousands of error messages cpio: Malformed number
Is there some offset involved ?

/opt/hfs13.0.1067/bin/hexpand ./test.hipnc
bash: /opt/hfs13.0.1067/bin/hexpand: /bin/csh: bad interpreter: No such file or directory

Sorry I didnt have a csh installed. But I still have a problem.
test.hipnc does not seem to be a .hip file.

Oh… Yeah, you won't be able to hexpand .hipnc files since that's basically cheating and would allow people to extract work done in a non-commercial file for use in commercial files.

Is it possible to expand indie hip files ?

So I guess its also impossible to extract indie hip files ?

I've never attempted to use hexpand before. Is it still working in H16?
Or maybe it's a Windows issue?

If I attempt to run the Houdini Command Line Tools,

'hexpand' is not recognized as an internal or external command, operable program or batch file.

Allegro
Or maybe it's a Windows issue?

So from what I can tell, hexpand and hcollapse don't work with windows, and instead you use hcpio [www.sidefx.com]. Is there any other documentation than this for this utility? I seem to be able to use hcpio to extract the .hip file into folders/files however I'm not having any luck using

"[where exe is located]\hcpio.exe" -o -O .\test.hip

After I enter that in the command line, it just sits there doing nothing… if I type a file name, it lets me move onto a new line, and if I type anything else it says "Warning *.* not found - skipping. Not sure what else I should be doing to assemble the .hip file.

On Windows just use 7-zip.

Hey Symek,

Can you actually collapse back into with 7zip ? I believe 7zip cannot write cpio files ?

Thanks for the help, trying to rescue a corrupted hip file