Hi, I'm not sure of the exact terminology so I'll try to explain my question.

I have a set of shader nodes with names matching the texture set. ie. Engine shader has 4 texture maps. Engine_Base, Engine_Roughness, etc.

When working with a lot of textures, I have a fairly simple (but tedious) workflow of copying the name from the shader node and pasting into each file string for the maps.

What I'd like to do is use 1 file string for each map that looks at the name of the shader and appends _Base, _Roughness etc.

ie.
$HIP/tex/“somethingsimplebutclever”_Base.png
$HIP/tex/“somethingsimplebutclever”_Roughness.png
etc

I'd be very grateful if someone can enlighten me.

thanks
Rob

If you name your shader “Engine” you can reference the name of the shader in your path like this: “$HIP/tex/$OS.Base.png” $OS is the name of the current node.
It doesn't resolve when there is an underscore after it so name your texture like this instead: Engine.Base.png.

An other option is to make your own variables: Edit->Aliases and Variables->Variables. Here you could make variables for whatever you want and reference them in your nodes to your hearts content.

-b

https://www.sidefx.com/docs/houdini13.0/expressions/_globals [sidefx.com]

Thanks for your help. I knew it was something simple but I was using underscores.

I'll see if I can cope without using underscores for everything and look at the other option if (when) that fails.

thanks
Rob