I thought that was funny. I am trying to follow along Jason Iversons vex tutorials on odforce… Since I am an apprentice, I relaized I had no idea how to create the vex code…So I looked it up in help under the shops What is vex… I am on an NT… When I start up the command line tools and type cd $HOME I get a return value of Sytem can not find that path… I have tried all the other Houdini variable also and get the same reponse… when I ehco $HOME in the textport I get CDOCUME~1/ADMINI~1/LOCALS~1/Temp I have tried many times to navigate to this directory. For the life of me I just can't find it in the windows explorer… I follow along with the help by simply writing the code, compiling it to $HFS/houdini/vex/Sop.. I got no errors.. I really want to get through Jasons tutorials aobut vex writing escpecialy as it relates to image3d shaders.. Can I change my defualt $HOME variable to something I can find on my System…. Thanks for any help

After some serious cold medicine and two boxes of tissues I finaly figured out the VEX scripting examples in the help files. WOW that took a long time…. First of all for some reason or another my Administrator folder was hidden…. Joy… Hidden folders basically SUCK. So after I unhid (is that a word) everything, I could find my $HOME directory.. Cool


So here was the rest of my day

At some point in the vex scripting basics a VEXsop file needs to be made that points to all the users vex files.. The example says

include $HH/vex/VEXsop
v_RandMove vex/Dialogs/Sop/RandMove.ds -label “VEX Random Mover”

After not being able to get my VEX sop to be read into houdini I tried the vex surface example.. In that example it states

include $HH/shop/SHOPsurface

“As with in the VEXsop file we created above, this line makes sure that the standard Houdini surface shaders are ‘seen’ by Houdini. Without this line, only your own shaders would be recognized by Houdini”..

Well In a desperate attempt, I deleted that line and all was fine..

I am curious if in Houdini 5.5 that line is still necessary to inform houdini to include the default shaders and VEX sops… I seem to have no problems after deleting the line… WOW :shock: that was a fun filled day of hacking…

Since my last post I have made some progress… I made it through the VEX examples down to the cop example v_flipper. flipper.vfl compiled fine and I made all the necessary directories and change the VEXcop and VEXcop2 I am curious should the flipper code be in cop or cop2… It seems to initialize into the cop menus either way I have tried both.. When I apply that filter to an image the image disappears and I get a red flag in the middle of the tile… Any suggestions…?

I wish I could help you, but I am having the first problem you ran into. I myself am presently on a NT machine, and I do not think when I installed Houdini 5.5.208 it placed any enviornmnet variables. At least I could not see any in there. When Houdini installed, does it automattically create path variables?

-capin_crunch
cheers

Variables puzzle me. I had to set a variable for my cHOME directory and I'm using Win2000 Pro.

Todd: You seem to be way ahead of me with Houdini. I'm just starting the learning of the basics.