I'm trying to load in some of the usd examples files that come preinstalled like for example the templatebody.
I'm loading it with the $HH env var like this "$HH/usd/assets/templatebody/templatebody.usd".
But when I try to write out a usd file the $HH doesn't get resolved and the usd contains an incorrect link
"prepend references = @houdini/usd/assets/templatebody/templatebody.usd@".

I'm trying to avoid having to use the absolute path to the file if possible since the files
location is going to be dependent on which version of houdini is opened.

Unchecking "use relative paths" in the rop doesn't seem to help either.

Is there a way to load the file using env vars and having it resolve/expand the path when exporting a usd file?

Paths that use $HFS (and $HH is the same as $HFS/houdini), are turned into 'search paths'; you can recognize search paths because they don't start with a period, slash, or drive letter. This was done intentionally to avoid making fragile absolute or relative paths that point to things that ship with Houdini. Houdini automatically adds $HFS as a search path, so it can find these assets automatically.

That makes total sense. But how does that work with husk?
I'm getting blank renders when rendering with husk on our renderfarm so I'm guessing either husk
doesn't know about those search paths by default or I screwed up something with our commandline command.
Do I perhaps need to add those env vars to husk or inject it somehow so it can find the files?

I would look into how you're launching husk, as these search paths should always be setup internally. There isn't any env var you need to set. If you can repro the problem with a vanilla, basic setup, please log a bug for it. Thanks!