Custom network OTL path

[Dennis Sedov]

I tried searching but have not found anything regarding setting up an OTL network path. Basically what I want to do is to have all Houdini workstations look up some network path (i.e. //data/system/tools/houdini/otl/ ) and load all *.otl files from there instead of $HFS/otl.

How can this be accomplished? I have not found any configuration files inside houdini that do that.

[graham]

Take a look at the HOUDINI_OTLSCAN_PATH. If you set that to point to your directory it will give you what you want.

hconfig -h HOUDINI_OTLSCAN_PATH

HOUDINI_OTLSCAN_PATH

This path specifies the directories Houdini will search for OTL files.

This value is only used if the Operator Type Manager is configured not

to use OPlibraries files to find OTL files. The default for this value

is the HOUDINI_OTL_PATH with "/otls" appended to each directory in

that path.

[Dennis Sedov]

Here is the thing... I've put this: HOUDINI_OTLSCAN_PATH = "//data/System/Tools/Houdini" into houdini.env and my OTLs do not load. If I put them in the $HFS/otls - they do load on startup.

Take a look at the HOUDINI_OTLSCAN_PATH. If you set that to point to your directory it will give you what you want.

hconfig -h HOUDINI_OTLSCAN_PATH

HOUDINI_OTLSCAN_PATH

This path specifies the directories Houdini will search for OTL files.

This value is only used if the Operator Type Manager is configured not

to use OPlibraries files to find OTL files. The default for this value

is the HOUDINI_OTL_PATH with "/otls" appended to each directory in

that path.

[graham]

You need to actually point it specifically to your otls directory, not just the Houdini config directory. Here's what mine looks like; I have it pointing to a few directories before looking at the one in the installation directory.

echo $HOUDINI_OTLSCAN_PATH

:/Users/gthompson/tooldev/otls:/Users/gthompson/otls:/Users/gthompson/Library/Preferences/houdini/10.0/otls:/Library/Frameworks/Houdini.framework/Versions/Current/Resources/houdini/otls/

[Dennis Sedov]

It worked! Now the problem is that Houdini does not look at "houdini.env" file. Defining HOUDINI_OTLSCAN_PATH in My Computer->Environment Variables worked though.

I wonder if there is a file in Houdini that defines local variables just for houdini. I.e. if I want to keep seprate environments for different versions of Houdini.

You need to actually point it specifically to your otls directory, not just the Houdini config directory. Here's what mine looks like; I have it pointing to a few directories before looking at the one in the installation directory.

echo $HOUDINI_OTLSCAN_PATH

:/Users/gthompson/tooldev/otls:/Users/gthompson/otls:/Users/gthompson/Library/Preferences/houdini/10.0/otls:/Library/Frameworks/Houdini.framework/Versions/Current/Resources/houdini/otls/

[graham]

Hmm. I had no problems moving my setup of HOUDINI_OTLSCAN_PATH out of my bashrc file into my houdini.env by just adding the following line of code.

HOUDINI_OTLSCAN_PATH = "/Users/gthompson/tooldev/otls:/Users/gthompson/otls:/Users/gthompson/Library/Preferences/houdini/10.0/otls:/Library/Frameworks/Houdini.framework/Versions/Current/Resources/houdini/otls/"

The houdini.env file will allow you to setup separate environments and paths for each major/minor build (9.1, 9.5, 10.0, etc). If you want any more control that that you would have to configure something more complex and pipeline like.