How to create custom bone Digital Assets?

[JoshJ]

I'd like to create some custom bone objects with subnets inside and some custom handles promoted. If I create a digital asset with a bone inside, I'd like to make the bone the "representative node" for the asset. Then I could possibly draw my custom bone object in the viewport, just like it was a normal bone. However, it notified me that I can only choose lights and cameras as representative nodes in the operator type properties.

How should I create my own custom bone Digital assets?

Thanks!

[JoshJ]

I'm going to try to work around this at the moment by building another bone chain inside an asset referenced on the fly from the original bone chain, then make my own custom stuff inside that asset. I haven't quite decided how to do this yet, but here goes. Any other methods or thoughts on this are welcome...

[sibarrick]

If you look in $HH/scripts/obj you'll find the bone.cmd creation script which builds the nodes for the existing bone object. You can make your own that changes what sops are used, maybe that will help.

[old school]

Warning: do this at your own risk!

You can also create a new asset and give it the identical name as the default Houdini object you want to replace then put this in the HOUDINI_PATH before the default operators are loaded in.

This will really "replace" the bone object and if not done VERY CAREFULLY will bust every and any file referencing a bone object.

To revert back, simply pull your own "bone" object out of the HOUDINI_PATH.

[JoshJ]

Thanks very much for the information about modifying the bone.cmd script. Since I asked this question, I developed another solution. Instead of modifying the original bone, I just created a digital asset that merges the bone geometries and makes the alternative structures I wanted.

Probably another time I will dig into the cmd scripts and figure out how they tick...

Do you think these .cmd files will eventually be replaced with python commands for creation?