merging otl's

[freaq]

hello odforce.

i'm looking for a way to combine several otl's into a big otl.

I would imagine this is a pretty simple operation but i can't find anything on the internet.

I want to do this to prevent overwriting my supervisors otl's and making it easier to manage.

any thoughts would be appreciated.

regards Freek hoekstra

[symek]

By hand or by script? Both ways possible. Operator Type Manager (Windows menu) allows you to copy and save assets across otls. As to Python hou.hda and hou.HDADefinition provide all you need to manage assets definitions.

[freaq]

By hand or by script? Both ways possible. Operator Type Manager (Windows menu) allows you to copy and save assets across otls. As to Python hou.hda and hou.HDADefinition provide all you need to manage assets definitions.

thank you for your reply!

i don't mind doing it by hand for now there aare only 12-15 digital assets so this is still managable...

the main isue is that although i can create duplicates in the manager,

houdini does not update the references. do I also need to do this manually by replacing the digital assets by the new versions?

and how does that work with old versions of the files?

[symek]

thank you for your reply!

i don't mind doing it by hand for now there aare only 12-15 digital assets so this is still managable...

the main isue is that although i can create duplicates in the manager,

houdini does not update the references. do I also need to do this manually by replacing the digital assets by the new versions?

and how does that work with old versions of the files?

You can uninstall old otls, so Houdini will switch to your new definitions. Alternatively you can force it switch to new assets ("Use This Definition" in the manager) or update time stamp of that, so Houdini will choose newest definition automatically.

There is a whole logic behind this how Houdini deals with multiply definitions of the same asset in multiply otls (refer to Help page about HDAs) for the very purpose so that users don't have to switch assets manually (unless they really want it).

Edited June 19, 2011 by SYmek

[freaq]

thank you, I have found the operator type manager,

and I have updated all copied all my assets into the file I would like to use and et them to use this defenition.

(they are green now so i'm assuming this is correct)

however if I save, close houdini and remove my old otl's the file opens with a warning that it can;t find all digital assets.

anything in particular that i'm doing wrong? possibly cause I renamed some assets that something is going wrong?

[michael]

one thing that you can try is to - in the Operator Type Manager - RMB and delete the unwanted otls from the hip session

you may get warning and/or errors - this might be caused by other things in your scene that are dependent on the old otls

once you clean all this up you should be able to save the file and re-open without errors

[symek]

thank you, I have found the operator type manager,

and I have updated all copied all my assets into the file I would like to use and et them to use this defenition.

(they are green now so i'm assuming this is correct)

however if I save, close houdini and remove my old otl's the file opens with a warning that it can;t find all digital assets.

anything in particular that i'm doing wrong? possibly cause I renamed some assets that something is going wrong?

Well, you definitely can't rename assets, because you change their identity that way (btw you shouldn't also delete files from a disk before uninstalling them from a hip, or Houdini will crash after that). As Micheal said, warning probably means you still have some OP in a scene referencing old otl.

This is pretty much common work flow and is used by many people here. I've seen hips with a few hundreds of references to distinctive assets, some of which had more then dozen of versions in different otls. No problem.

Some tips though after many human-errors: I never-ever use OPcustom.otl, trash it. Otls files are named so that type and version of the operator inside is clear: vex_hammerd_iron_v01.otl (thus operator name can stay the same), and I hardly ever save more than a single asset into one otl. It's easier for distributing, true. Anything else works better if assets are separated imho.