Bug with HDA "missing node"

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Hi!

I'm encountering a non blocking bug that is rather strange:
Houdini plugin for Unity tells me this:
There are undefined nodes… [drive.google.com]

But the HDA behaves normally, and I don't think it misses anything!
How can I track down what could potentially be missing?
Edited by Bill_Sansky - Jan. 3, 2020 13:10:26
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we have also encountered this, would love a solution because the same DA is outputting different results on other computers when this message appears
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This means that there are external assets referenced from within the HDA, but they are not found in the asset loading paths. To fix this, you can add the path where the asset resides to the unity_houdini.env file in your Assets/ folder in Unity, like this:
HOUDINI_OTLSCAN_PATH=C:/path/to/hda;&

Create the unity_houdini.env file if you don't already have it. It has to be created manually by the user and is used to set up the Houdini Engine session environment.

Are you using SideFX Labs asset(s) within your HDAs?
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Hi seelan , thanks for your reply.

We currently have my computer where the asset is working and another where we installed today houdini and updated labs where it also works.

The problem is the third computer shows this message when the DA is dragged into the scene in unity, then it appears to break where the labs nodes are used (for example the axis align doesn't quite work).

It does, however, work when the digital asset is opened in Houdini on that machine.

So how can we make sure the engine knows where the labs nodes are? im not quite sure how the .env file works…it was not needed to get it working on the other machines.
Edited by 3Dben - Jan. 20, 2020 11:50:31
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We just fixed the issue by deleting the whole plugin directory on affected machine (under unity project assets/plugins) then reimporting from the houdini install folder. I think it probably was the labs assets it couldn't find.
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seelan
Are you using SideFX Labs asset(s) within your HDAs?
Yes I am, am I suppose to link it too in the env file? because I tried this and it did not work. I believe I linked all my directories in the env file too: the message is still showing but the HDA seems to work just fine.

Could that be coming from the auto uv lab node configured to unwrap (and so using the basic houdini node)?
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Update: I checked with simple networks, and it looks like the error shows only when using SideFX Labs nodes. I tried to add the path in the env file, I also tried to add the direct path to the HDA, but nothing worked: how to solve that?
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Could you paste your env file content here?

What worked for me was something like the following in unity_houdini.env:
HOUDINI_OTLSCAN_PATH=C:/Users/seelanv/Documents/houdini18.0/SideFXLabs/349 (local)/otls;&

Note that you'll need to restart Unity for it to take effect.
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I have the same problem. I'm using the SideFX Labs nodes for quite a few HDAs, but now I can't share my tools with the team because of this error. I need some guidance on how to solve it!
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Make sure the others also have the matching version of SideFX Labs installed.
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We have the same problem here. I’m not aware of using any Labs node, so I assume the message is caused by an own HDA which is referenced by the main HDA. (Although both HDAs are copied into the same folder in the Unity project).
The message isn’t very specific, is there a way to find out which Definitions exactly are missing and where Houdini Engine currently searches for them (like the section “Scanned Asset Library Directories” in the Asset Manager in Houdini)?

Also, it seems that the path in unity_houdini.env must be an absolute path, which is not very practical when using a VCS. Is there any way to give a relative path?
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Please submit a ticket to our support to improve the message when dependent HDAs are not found.

As for unity_houdini.env file, it only supports relative paths when using paths in Assets/ or Packages/. The reason being is that the plugin uses quite a few Unity APIs to load assets, which only work with relative paths from Assets/ and Packages/.

If you are using VCS, the recommended workflow is to use a mapping as described here:
https://www.sidefx.com/docs/unity/_environment.html#Environment_File_Paths [www.sidefx.com]

You can set a single path to your VCS root in unity_houdini.env:
HEU_ENVPATH_VSC_ROOT=C:\Dev\MyRepo

Then any assets loaded from C:\Dev\MyRepo will have <HEU_ENVPATH_VSC_ROOT> as part of their path. Then when using this asset on another computer, as long as it has HEU_ENVPATH_VSC_ROOT mapped in its local unity_houdini.env file, it will evaluate to the proper location.
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