Creating a Tool Window

[RuschFX]

hey guys,

I'm trying to build a tool for Houdini and I need to dynamically populate lists. I tried using hou to edit the otl's parameter interface but found it wasn't flexible enough. Now I'm using wx to create a popup window but it seems kind of buggy (likes to crash my Houdini). I'm on a 64 bit Linux machine running Houdini 9.5. Does anybody have any suggestions on how to go about creating a tool window in Houdini and is there anything else that would work better than wx? Any tips you might have would be a big help! Thanks...

- Jake

[graham]

There are some examples of creating custom dialogs using both wxPython and PyQt in the HOM Cookbook in the help. Also, recently a new hook to Houdini's event loop was added to make issues with threading and refreshing easier.

[RuschFX]

Thanks graham, I'll definitely look into PyQt....

[anakin78z]

If you're only doing lists, have you checked out hou.ui.selectFromList? It fills most of my list needs.

If not:

I found gtk to be a lot easier to implement than qt.

Here's an example scrpt. A lot of the comments are stripped from an example on pygtk I found online... I don't remember who the author was, but credit goes out to him... he might've just been the python docs though.

The script pops up a text input window, then creates an object and font sop displaying the entered text. (This was implemented as a shelf tool).

# example helloworld.py
import hou
#import pygtk_helper
import threading

global text
text = 'poop'

def RunHelloWorld():
  import pygtk
  pygtk.require('2.0')
  import gtk
  class HelloWorld(threading.Thread):

	# This is a callback function. The data arguments are ignored
	# in this example. More on callbacks below.
	def hello(self, widget, data=None):
		self.text = self.entry.get_text()
		#This is where I currently run the houdini code.  It's triggered when
		#the button is pressed and run before the gtk window closes.
		geo = hou.node('/obj').createNode('geo','Input_Font',run_init_scripts=False)
		font = geo.createNode('font','resulting_text')
		font.parm('text').set(self.text)
		font.setDisplayFlag(True)

	def delete_event(self, widget, event, data=None):
		# If you return FALSE in the "delete_event" signal handler,
		# GTK will emit the "destroy" signal. Returning TRUE means
		# you don't want the window to be destroyed.
		# This is useful for popping up 'are you sure you want to quit?'
		# type dialogs.
		print "delete event occurred"

		# Change FALSE to TRUE and the main window will not be destroyed
		# with a "delete_event".
		return False

	def destroy(self, widget, data=None):
		#print "destroy signal occurred"
		gtk.main_quit()

	def __init__(self):
		super(HelloWorld,self).__init__()
		#self.init_app()

		# create a new window
		self.window = gtk.Window(gtk.WINDOW_TOPLEVEL)

		# When the window is given the "delete_event" signal (this is given
		# by the window manager, usually by the "close" option, or on the
		# titlebar), we ask it to call the delete_event () function
		# as defined above. The data passed to the callback
		# function is NULL and is ignored in the callback function.
		self.window.connect("delete_event", self.delete_event)

		# Here we connect the "destroy" event to a signal handler.  
		# This event occurs when we call gtk_widget_destroy() on the window,
		# or if we return FALSE in the "delete_event" callback.
		self.window.connect("destroy", self.destroy)

		# Sets the border width of the window.
		self.window.set_border_width(10)

		self.vbox = gtk.VBox(False,0)
		self.window.add(self.vbox)
		self.vbox.show()

		self.entry = gtk.Entry()
		self.entry.set_max_length(0)
		self.entry.set_text("Enter Text Here")
		self.vbox.pack_start(self.entry,True,True,0)
		self.entry.show()

		# Creates a new button with the label "Hello World".
		self.button = gtk.Button("Print Text")

		# When the button receives the "clicked" signal, it will call the
		# function hello() passing it None as its argument.  The hello()
		# function is defined above.
		self.button.connect("clicked", self.hello, None)

		# This will cause the window to be destroyed by calling
		# gtk_widget_destroy(window) when "clicked".  Again, the destroy
		# signal could come from here, or the window manager.
		self.button.connect_object("clicked", gtk.Widget.destroy, self.window)

		# This packs the button into the window (a GTK container).
		self.vbox.pack_start(self.button,True,True,0)

		# The final step is to display this newly created widget.
		self.button.show()

		# and the window
		self.window.show()

	def run(self):
		# All PyGTK applications must have a gtk.main(). Control ends here
		# and waits for an event to occur (like a key press or mouse event).
		gtk.main()

  hello = HelloWorld()
  hello.start()


#
RunHelloWorld()

Edited January 30, 2009 by anakin78z

[RuschFX]

Thanks for all your help guys! I ended up going with wxPython to create the external popup window for my tool. I still wish there was an easy way to dynamically populate the parameters window of an otl tho.....anyways. Thanks again!

- Jake