(novice) $JOB vs $HIP

[art3mis]

Most of the default pathing in houdini seems to make use of $HIP. But using a 'hip' subfolder to save your scenes when setting up your project IMHO keeps things better organized.

Then its simply a matter of replacing $HIP with $JOB whenever it comes up.

Is this simply subjective and a user preference or is there another reason why it makes sense to use $HIP?

 

[Atom]

For simple scenes I just use $HIP.

If I know I am going to work on a larger project with shared assets between scenes I will take the time to make a File/New Project and then save into that project folder. Then you can use $JOB. If you add a new .hip file to the project you have to remember to File/Set Project to that folder. The setting of the project actually assigns the $JOB to that path.

I am sure different studios have different rules about that.

Edited June 14, 2017 by Atom

[f1480187]

You can use "$HIP/../pic/mandril.pic". Dots means "go up one level". You can do things like "../pic/../pic/../pic/../pic" if you want (there is no reason for this). $HIP is more portable with same meaning for all users.

[Pancho]

But that assumes that it's just in the first subfolder of "scenes". In larger projects there might be several subfolders and the way of dealing with it by going up one level won't lead to the correct directory.

I haven't fully understand how to set up the $JOB variable yet. People seem to set it up in their houdini.env file, which doesn't make any sense to me since this is global, right? I switch projects many times a day, so this needs to be setup somewhere in the scene itself. So, how and where is it done?

Cheers
Tom

[Howitzer99]

I've recently started using the QLib environment_ql node, which simplifies setting the $JOB variable, among many other things.  And since the variable is being set in a node, you can copy this from scene to scene in a project, instead of having to remember to set the $JOB variable.  Also saves time from having to remember, what can sometimes be, pretty lengthy filepaths at some studios.

Once installed, drop down an environment_ql node in the OBJ context.  In the Variables tab, set the Value to point to your job filepath, and then hit the Override button side the Name: JOB variable to set.  You can use the Refresh Now button at the top of the parameter window to refresh the system variables, just to be safe that the variable has been set.  You can also use the interface to add new variables.

The whole QLib package is insanely helpful!  You can grab the files from their GitHub page: https://github.com/qLab/qLib