How to save out all presets for all nodes?

[kleer001]

... and then merge them with another set... ?!

 

I have a mess of presets for SOPs, DOPs, ROPs, POPs, etc at home. And I have a similar, but more extensive set at work. How can I merge these two non-destructively? Or even better how can I share these with coworkers or the nice people here at OdForce?

 

I know I can RMB click on an individual node and "Save to Gallery", but that seems painful to do for dozens of nodes. Heck, I don't even remember which ones have presets. Maybe there's a phython solution.

 

As an aside... if I had only one complaint about Houdini it would be the severe lack of presets and preset libraries. Maybe this burrows down into general dealing with presets lack there of. Or maybe I'm being too demanding and complainy.

[Skybar]

They're saved as a file in the preferences, aren't they? Maybe you could do something with those.

[kleer001]

yup, they're all saved in:

 

Users\Documents\houdini13.0\presets\

 

as an "idx" file.

 

There's this thread that makes the whole process seem 100x more painful than it needs to be:

http://www.sidefx.com/index.php?option=com_forum&Itemid=172&page=viewtopic&p=119112&sid=6ebd26ef7721b8f1a29b3e22572bcf57

 

then there's this method from an old co-worker: http://www.subsites.org/408.0.html

 

1) expand your local presets in (eg. in $HOME/houdini9.1/Presets do "hidx -x myFilePreset file.idx")
    this creates a directory myFilePreset with all your File-SOP presets as single files
2) expand your show-presets (eg. /job/myjob/common/houdini/presets   do " hidx -x showFilePreset file.idx")
    this creates a directory showFilePreset with all the Presets for that node which are available to the show
3) copy the presets files you want to share with the show from your "myFilePreset" directory into the "showFilePreset" directory
4) pack your presets back together using "hidx -c "showFilePreset" file.idx, and the same to your presets as well.
5) and you are done

 

 

Maybe I'll try that last one, it doesn't seem too insane.

Edited August 6, 2014 by kleer001

[kleer001]

Ok, tried this out.

 

Notes:

 

1) "hidx" is not a standalone program on MacOSx, you have to open up "Houdini Shell.terminal" that sister to the Houdini executable in your Applications folder.

 

2) Second note is that copying the decompressed preference file, in that directory you created, isn't enough. You also have to add the name of the preference in the accompanying "Sections.list" file. Name it twice and separate by a tab. If the preference to add is called "Easy Peasy" you have to add the line

 

"Easy Peasy"    "Easy Peasy"

 

Now, all I have to do is roll it up into a mungy python script. Easy as pie! Well, pie that takes a few days to prepare.

 

~ Pipeline Janitor AWAY! ~

Edited August 9, 2014 by kleer001