novice- when why launch from the command line

[art3mis]

As a novice not sure how much time I want to spend learning various terminal and console commands to launch Houdini.

Can anyone explain when and why you should launch Houdini via termial-console?

Edited July 26, 2016 by eco_bach

[Mandrake0]

when you want to be a master you have to lunch at the console.  

when you are using hrender, hbatch or hython or other houdini app it makes 100% to use the console. for houdini itself it depends on the situation.  

 

here are some informations about commandline usage:

http://www.sidefx.com/docs/houdini15.5/ref/commandline

http://houdinitricks.com/command-line-rendering-in-houdini/

 

 

[old school]

The number 1 reason to work with shells is that each shell represents it's own environment. Each environment can be set up to a separate project, shot, scene, WIP test of an HDA asset, different versions of Houdini per shell, whatever.

Most users in production need concern themselves with a single task. This means that launching Houdini with a single environment. GUI works as well as a whole host of other tools such as python GUI launchers, launching through a Production Management software, double clicking on a .hip file.

As you get more and more things on the go shells start to make a lot of sense. Each shell can be configured with different environment variables to point at any build of Houdini with any project environment.

Another reason to look at shells as a power user is that all the launch scripts for Houdini are either a csh or bash script, no matter how you launch Houdini. These shell scripts are used to configure the Houdini environment. Convenience is a huge factor here.

Using shells isn't for everyone. Actually 99% of users in production don't need shells to do what they want. So many other ways to work. But if you aspire to be a full on Houdini user in a demanding production environment and desire complete control, there is no equivalent to using shells. It's truly liberating for power users.

It's easy to get in to shells with Houdini. Houdini ships with it's own shell wrapper that you can double click in Windows/MacOS. This installs the Houdini environment. Then you need to concern yourself with a handful of commands: ls (directory listing), cd (change directory), cp (copy), mv (move), houdini, mplay.

Shells are available in all OS'es. Linux and Mac have Unix underpinning where shells are how you interface with the OS. Windows has it's own shells which are getting better or you can install CYGWIN, a 3rd party Open Source shell environment for Windows. It's also interesting to see that Microsoft after all these years seems to be tipping it's hand to more Unix/Linux tools and collaborations. There is even rumour of a proper shell running tcsh and bash in the next release but we'll see...

 

As for what type of shell to use, there are quite a few with the two most common in the CG industry being csh / tcsh (SGI roots showing) or bash which is the Linux default shell. There are those old school users that still cling to csh or tcsh but I made the switch over to bash shells way back when Houdini was ported to linux. I believe most Houdini users have moved over to bash as well. New shell adopters gravitate toward bash. Why fight the default.

 

Hope this helps.

[mestela]

Other misc reasons:

-on OSX its the only way to launch multiple instances of Houdini (double clicking the Houdini icon in your apps folder will just switch focus to the existing running Houdini last I checked).

-software crashes and hangs are easier to handle from a terminal. All software crashes or hangs, houdini for the most part is pretty stable, but it has its bad days like any other package (especially when you start pushing things like creating more geo than your machine can fit into memory, or accidentally setup a runaway loop, or your graphics card decides it just had enough etc). When that happens, especially if you have multiple houdini's open, its easier to go directly to that shell and hit ctrl-c to immediately kill houdini, or if it crashes view the log to see why it crashed, or most usefully, ask houdini to close itself as elegantly as possible and try and save a scene file while it does so. This has helped me countless times.

-some status messages only get sent to the terminal. if you don't launch from a terminal those messages are usually redirected somewhere else, and you can probably find them if you look hard enough, but know that it's all in the one window is easier

-history command completion, arguments. Jeff hinted at this, but you can launch houdini and have it load a file in one go by typing 'houdinifx /path/to/file.hip'. if you wan't it to load the file, but in manual mode first, you can use 'houdinifx -n /path/to/heavy/file.hip'. when you've closed houdini, or it crashes, in the terminal you just hit up-arrow, enter, and it re-runs the last command you typed. most terminals will store history even after you close the terminal, shutdown the machine etc, so when you come back to work tomorrow, to pickup where you left off you can just open a terminal again, up arrow, enter, away you go. if you setup history searching the right way, you can even type 'houdinifx', then up arrow, and you'll only be auto-completing to lines where you typed houdinifx to start with, handy way to search back through the last days, weeks, months of work, and find that file you can't remember the path to.

 

once you start, you can't go back.

-matt

 

[michael]

and aliases...

I get to my usual working environment in a shell like this:

open new shell

> go

this cd's to my working directory

then I do 

> h 15.5 (or whatever version of Houdini I need to run)

>The Houdini 15.5.551 environment has been initialized.

then I use "ho" to run Houdini

> ho fileName.hip

 

 

[art3mis]

thanks. great answers. developing an unhealthy houdini addiction:)