My rop geometry nodes have been set to a $VARIABLE pointing to a folder on my local hard drive. This works fine, but when I set the file path to PDG_DIR or __PDG_DIR__ which is pointing to our file server the files don't actually get written. There is no error and the log output lists the correct file path and location, but it just never shows up. My scheduler is set to $JOB/pdg as the working directory. Every other aspect of is working fine including the $JOB variable elsewhere in the scene as well as my hda processor output paths. Using $JOB as a test in the rop geometry node file path results in NONE/filepath.. as well.

Could you please attach your hip file to demonstrate ?

I have the same question, if you specify __PDG_DIR__ or __PDG_TEMP__ in the ROP Geometry node as the output path for the geometry, then the result is not saved to disk, but the node shows that everything is correct and the Output attribute shows the correct code.

In the help I found the wording

Put intermediate files under __PDG_TEMP__ and “final output” files under __PDG_DIR__.

Categorize output files using subdirectories. For example, __PDG_TEMP__/geo for intermediate geometry files and __PDG_DIR__/geo for final geometry output.

How then to use it?

Thanks in advance.

You are right the docs are misleading there - the __PDG_DIR__ syntax can only be used for TOP node parms that are not used internally by Houdini. For example ffmpeg or filepattern node. For Houdini-ROP nodes you should use $HIP. When __PDG_DIR__ is used for the ROP Geometry output parm it will be unfortunately treated as a path relative to wherever you started Houdini from.

chrisgreb
You are right the docs are misleading

Yeah the docs should be updated! I spent a good chunk of time trying to debug why isn't $PDG_DIR working in ROP Geometry Output.