Is there a way to force Houdini to always load (or at least upon clicking “reload”) the last (highest) incremented Alembic / Fbx (or any geo file) automatically? Like a little string after the file name pointing at the highest incremented number.

Cheers,

A.

The definition of ‘highest’ is probably not a very consistent concept among users. Studio pipelines generally use a database for this sort of thing.

It sounds like you want a script to look at the path and parse out a version number and then glob for files that are in the same folder, grabbing the highest found. The typical way is with python in a shelf script, but it can also be put into module used by a button's callback that is added to the permanent defaults for the read nodes.

jsmack
The definition of ‘highest’ is probably not a very consistent concept among users. Studio pipelines generally use a database for this sort of thing.

It sounds like you want a script to look at the path and parse out a version number and then glob for files that are in the same folder, grabbing the highest found. The typical way is with python in a shelf script, but it can also be put into module used by a button's callback that is added to the permanent defaults for the read nodes.

Thanks. I was digging in the topic after reading a post on facebook, someone had issues overwriting Alembics when they are in use in Houdini forcing him to restart Houdini each time the ABC had to be updated. I personally always increment geo files so i never experienced that issue. But i do have to go into the geo nodes and update the new Alembic/Obj/Fbx each time which can indeed be a bit time consuming with lots of assets. So i was hoping there would be a little line i could drop in there. “$JOB/geo/geo.version`latest`.abc” and then have a button somewhere to reload all or only selected assets.

Thanks for your time and insights. Appreciated.

Sounds like that someone was probably running Windows, where you can't write to a file currently open for reading. Otherwise, the Alembic SOP has a Reload Geometry button that should update the cache if the file changes.

Adriano

jsmack
The definition of ‘highest’ is probably not a very consistent concept among users. Studio pipelines generally use a database for this sort of thing.

It sounds like you want a script to look at the path and parse out a version number and then glob for files that are in the same folder, grabbing the highest found. The typical way is with python in a shelf script, but it can also be put into module used by a button's callback that is added to the permanent defaults for the read nodes.

Thanks. I was digging in the topic after reading a post on facebook, someone had issues overwriting Alembics when they are in use in Houdini forcing him to restart Houdini each time the ABC had to be updated. I personally always increment geo files so i never experienced that issue. But i do have to go into the geo nodes and update the new Alembic/Obj/Fbx each time which can indeed be a bit time consuming with lots of assets. So i was hoping there would be a little line i could drop in there. “$JOB/geo/geo.version`latest`.abc” and then have a button somewhere to reload all or only selected assets.

Thanks for your time and insights. Appreciated.

If you know python you can create a spare parameter where you get that latest file, and then reference that in the main file parameter.

A-OC

Adriano

jsmack
The definition of ‘highest’ is probably not a very consistent concept among users. Studio pipelines generally use a database for this sort of thing.

It sounds like you want a script to look at the path and parse out a version number and then glob for files that are in the same folder, grabbing the highest found. The typical way is with python in a shelf script, but it can also be put into module used by a button's callback that is added to the permanent defaults for the read nodes.

Thanks. I was digging in the topic after reading a post on facebook, someone had issues overwriting Alembics when they are in use in Houdini forcing him to restart Houdini each time the ABC had to be updated. I personally always increment geo files so i never experienced that issue. But i do have to go into the geo nodes and update the new Alembic/Obj/Fbx each time which can indeed be a bit time consuming with lots of assets. So i was hoping there would be a little line i could drop in there. “$JOB/geo/geo.version`latest`.abc” and then have a button somewhere to reload all or only selected assets.

Thanks for your time and insights. Appreciated.

If you know python you can create a spare parameter where you get that latest file, and then reference that in the main file parameter.

I know Python, but we haven't spoken to each other in a long time I'll give him a call and see if we can work something out.

Ah!

I wish.