Reference Network editor

Connect to the outputs of other nodes. Many SOPs take geometry as input from “upstream” nodes, modify it, and output the modified geometry, to be used as input to other nodes.

Connect to the inputs of other nodes. Many SOPs take geometry as input from “upstream” nodes, modify it, and output the modified geometry, to be used as input to other nodes.

Most node tiles have areas on the tile that you can click to turn certain flags on or off for that node. Some flags toggle on and off when you click the flag area, but some flags can only be on for one node at a time.

Use these menu items to switch the display flag, render flag, template flag, or lock flag on and off. They are the same as clicking the colored flags on the tile.

Add the state of the flag to the current take.

(SOPs only) Opens a new viewport in which you can view and edit the SOP’s geometry. This lets you see the effects of work in other panes, or higher up in the chain, on that sop.

(SOPs only) Opens a geometry spreadsheet for the SOP in a new floating window.

(SOPs only) Lets you save the SOP’s geometry as a .geo, .bgeo (Houdini geometry), .poly, .bpoly (action geometry), .rib (RenderMan), .dxf, .iv (Inventor), or .obj file (see file formats supported by Houdini ).

You can read the geometry back into Houdini use the File SOP.

Opens a parameter editor for the node in a new floating window.

Opens a window where you can view and edit the node’s comment field. This is the same as clicking the comment icon in the parameter editor.

(POPs only) Matches the viewport display to the current frame of the simulation. This ensures the display is accurate, but takes more time.

For example, say you have changed Editors and the Playbar is set later than the last time the pop was cooked. With Viewport Sync enabled, all the in-between frames will be cooked and the updated simulation shown.

If Viewport Sync is off, no frames are cooked, so you must remember that what is shown in the viewport may not be up-to-date. The Reset button in the Playbar will turn yellow to indicate that the viewport is out of date.

This lets you change the node to a different node type, while optionally keeping its name, parameters, and network contents.

Saves the custom data associated with the node type of the selected node to a .optype file.

This is the information shared by all nodes of the node type, not information for this specific node. This includes the creation script, the dialog script, the implementation (.so, .vex, or .vfl), the help card, the icon, and the label. You can edit the node type values by choosing Type Properties.

(Subnets only) Creates a new scripted subnet from the node and saves it to a .optype file. You can then load the .optype file using File > Install OP Type.

You can script this using optyperead, optypewrite, optypeinstall, and optypeuninstall.

Embeds the node, for example, a shader node (SHOP), in a new VOP type and saves it to disk. You can then load the new VOP into a VOP network.

Jump down into the contents of a sub-network.

(POP SOP only) Opens a editor for a POP SOP’s POP network .

Hide or show the chains of nodes preceding/following the node. A collapsed chain is represented by a dashed connection line.

Selects all nodes that connect into/out of the node.

Lets you scope channels on the node and create channel groups. This is the same as right-clicking a node in the channels list beside the channel editor.

Creates a copy of this node that gets all its values from the original.

Deletes the node. The network does its best to reconnect the remaining nodes.

Opens the Operator Type Properties window.

Lets you manually set the order of nodes by dragging them.

Sorts the nodes by name.

Sorts the nodes by type.

In Object networks (OBJ), this sorts the nodes into a tree according to parent-child relationships. Child objects are indented under parent objects. If the indenting would push the node off the edge of the pane, +number is used instead to show how many additional levels the node would be indented.