Hey all. I'm trying to see if it's possible load text into the “TEXT” field of the FONT node from an external text file. I didn't see anything about parsing data in this way in the manual. I've done it in other programs but just not sure if Houdini can. Anyone have a solution for this?

You could use a Python expression to handle this, if you're familiar. Basically you'd add a spare parm to your Font SOP that would point to a text file, and then create a Python expression in the “Text” parameter that would load that file and return its contents, like this:


I'm attaching a little example.

toadstorm
You could use a Python expression to handle this, if you're familiar. Basically you'd add a spare parm to your Font SOP that would point to a text file, and then create a Python expression in the “Text” parameter that would load that file and return its contents, like this:

file_path = hou.pwd().parm("file_path").eval()
text = ""
with open(file_path, 'r') as f:
    text = f.read()
return text

I'm attaching a little example.

Thank you! I will try this out.

Just updating cos I stumbled across this today, there's a helper function to read text files in directly:


Which works directly in the text field (after you do that silly dance to keyframe the text field, then swap it to python)