upgraded to 13, how to migrate customizations?

[kleer001]

So I finally installed 13... but all my old digital assets, desktops, and the rest are still in 12.5 land. How do I sweep up all that old customization? Seems easy, right? I searched a bit, but couldn't find anything. Maybe I'm not searching for the right thing or my brain's mush from last night.

Get old prefs, how do?!

[Skybar]

I dont know where the prefs are located elsewhere, but on windows c:/users/*user*/documents/houdini[version number]. It *could* be as easy to change that folder name, but dont quote me on that, I dont know if that brings trouble or not. Atleast you got all your prefs there, so you could manually copy what you want.

[magneto]

I always redo it by hand, except hotkey overrides, then copy my shelf and OTL files.

[graham]

The quick and dirty way is to just copy your config folder to the appropriate name for Houdini 13.0.

For me personally, anything that isn't Houdini version specific I put in their own folder in the HOUDINI_PATH. All my otls, scripts, shelf tools, desktops, etc. might go in the appropriate folders inside my $HOME/tooldev folder which I add to HOUDINI_PATH. That way they always get loaded no matter what version I might be in and I don't have to worry about them.

[magneto]

The quick and dirty way is to just copy your config folder to the appropriate name for Houdini 13.0.

For me personally, anything that isn't Houdini version specific I put in their own folder in the HOUDINI_PATH. All my otls, scripts, shelf tools, desktops, etc. might go in the appropriate folders inside my $HOME/tooldev folder which I add to HOUDINI_PATH. That way they always get loaded no matter what version I might be in and I don't have to worry about them.

How do you do that? I have to use custom 123, 456 scripts to load OTLs. I find Houdini sometimes not loading OTLs, preferences, presets especially if I open hip files after a new session.

[graham]

I don't do anything special, just set a custom HOUDINI_PATH to include my custom root directory ($HOME/tooldev). Houdini does the rest without any additional scripting required. I do use 456.py and pythonrc.py files, but not for anything particularly important.

If you are manually installing otl files using hou.hda.installFile, you'll definitely have to reinstall them every time you open a new scene since by default it installs them to the "Current Hip File". As long are you aren't using OPlibraries to find the otls, they should just be picked up automatically by Houdini assuming the files are in an otls/ folder somewhere in HOUDINI_PATH.

As for other things like prefs and presets, can't say I've ever had issues with them not loading up properly when doing File > New or loading a hip from an existing session.

[magneto]

Thanks Graham. So in your tooldev, you have a specific directory structure Houdini understands? For example otls, scripts?

I think doing this might actually solve all of the other problems I have

[graham]

Houdini will treat any directory in the HOUDINI_PATH the same, as a houdini config directory, whether that be $HOME/houdiniX.Y, /some/dir, $HFS/houdini. These folders can have otls, scripts, config and desktop folders, as well as one off files like HotkeyOverrides, MainMenu* files, etc. $HIP is automatically added to the front of the path when you launch or load a hip, this is why you can have otls/ folders beside hip files and have them picked up.

http://www.sidefx.com/docs/houdini13.0/basics/config#idm47577519687152

~> ls tooldev/
art/       display_options.def  HotkeyOverrides  toolbars/
config/       hdk/    otls/
default_help_section  help/    PARMmenu.xml
desktop/       hip/    scripts/

[magneto]

Thanks Graham. Unfortunately Houdini path setups are still something that puzzles me. I don't know how to set them up properly. For example when we set up HOUDINI_PATH, do we add it as a user environment variable or system environment variable? If we just include my path in HOUDINI_PATH, then would it also not require other default paths to be added to function properly? If so, what are those paths, etc?

I don't see anything in the help explaining these

[graham]

I imagine you are working on Windows? I'm not really sure about setting variables on Windows, but it's pretty trivial on linux or Mac (assuming you launch using the terminal link) to setup in your shell using csh/tcsh/bashrc files.

When actually setting the variables, I can set the HOUDINI_PATH to something like this: "${HOME}/tooldev:&", where the & sign tells Houdini to insert the default HOUDINI_PATH entries ($HIP, $HOME/houdiniX.Y, $JOB, $HSITE, $HFS/houdini, etc) to the path automatically, effectively giving me HOUDINI_PATH = "/home/gthompson/tooldev:/home/gthompson/houdini13.0:/opt/hfs13.0.252/houdini".

There's a little more information here: http://www.sidefx.co...config_env.html however, the houdini.env file isn't useful for setting search paths since Houdini uses the paths to find it.

[magneto]

Thanks Graham, yes on windows 7. I am now using HOUDINI_OTLSCAN_PATH, which seems to work. I use this path:

&;C:\myotls

All other files, I don't mind having them under HOME, since they stay with the same version for a long time.

Another thing that I couldn't find a way to automate is 3DSceneColors. Do you know if that can be stored in a folder outside Sidefx folder in program files? I have to manually copy my file. I assume this file is not meant for customization the way *hcs files do?

Thanks

[graham]

You can put your 3DSceneColors.[bw/wb] inside a config/ folder somewhere in HOUDINI_PATH. Similarly you can do that with your desktops as well, so regardless of which version you are using, you can have the same desktops, scene backgrounds, color schemes, etc.

> ls ~/tooldev/config/
3DSceneColors.wb  GUI2.hcs  GUI.hcs  Icons/
> ls ~/tooldev/desktop/
graham.desk

[Guest mantragora]

Thanks Graham, yes on windows 7.

If you can switch to 8.1. It's soooo much faster and lighter. When I tested it I didn't noticed, but now when I use it on daily basis it's just day and night compared to W7.

[magneto]

Thanks Graham, that was a huge help