This it´s a easy question, but I'm a newbie and I don't find any tutorial about this topic. I would like to know how works the houdini's filesystem, what the point of the $HIP, $JOB and $TEMP folders. What the function of each folder? I just don't know the diference between them

When you start houdini it will pick up any environment variable that yopu have set (in the current shell). Some of these variables are (very) specific to houdini.

For example:
$HIP is the path to the current file you are working on in houdini. You can use this in expressions and scripts to reference a path relative to the current file (e.g. when using textures $HIP/textures/mytexture)

$JOB is not specific to houdini but can be used if you have a big project and have many subdirectories for textures, shaders, geometry and cached simulations. You can use this variable the same way as the $HIP variable.

$TEMP is a system wide variable on windows and linux. Almost all applications will use this variable to store scratch files, dumps after a crash and whatever. On windows this variable links to C:\windows\temp and on linux most likely to /tmp.


I hope this gives you a few clues.

Hans

When I setup a project in Maya it create whole folder and sub-folder (Scene, Image, texture, etc), in Houdini isn't there nothing like that? Have I that create the whole folder and sub-folder system every time I open a new project? is there any script that makes it happen automatically?

Sorry, Houdini is definitely not a click-and-you-re-done application, the way you organize your directory structure depends on your project, on your companies workflow or whatever. You could make a template directory structure your self and then copy it when you start a new project, this will probably be easier than making a script.

alves_mauri
When I setup a project in Maya it create whole folder and sub-folder (Scene, Image, texture, etc)

yes, there is nothing like a directory structure that doesn't fit to anything in particular…

Imagine application that's lets you set-up paths up to your needs rather then imagination of its creators…

How about putting textures under conditional statement?, so you could write something like: background.rat instead of /mnt/PROJECT/shot/version/textures/background.rat
- so if Houdini finds background.rat in project folder, it will use it, otherwise it will use global background texture. Dozens possibilities.

Anyways, here you have a script for starting point: http://www.sidefx.com/exchange/info.php?fileid=480&versionid=480 [sidefx.com]

-File centric-
A quick way to get what you might want is
to open Houdini and immediately save the file into
a directory….like My “Best Project Ever”.

From that point your $HIP folder is “Best Project Ever”
and everything you need is put in that folder, Geo, images, textures or
whatever.

-Job Centric-
The other way is to be job centric and create the $JOB variable on your system and then that becomes where Houdini goes to look for thing first.

It is a little hard at first to wrap your head around,
but in the big picture it is flexible enough to setup any way you would want.

My personal method is the first, as its just me at home doing my own thing
and its real easy to use that way.
If you are at a studio, or have multiple people on a project you will need something more like the JOB centric way.

-Lyn-

Have a look at this thread:
http://forums.odforce.net/index.php?showtopic=659 [forums.odforce.net]

Is there a list of all $ variables?
And is there a node to set/get variable values?
For example I want to set the filenames of baked textures automatically based on the input fbx at the top of the graph.