I am a LW and Maya convert….and am used to having content directories.

Is there a proper way to organize your file structure on a single workstation.

For example all geometry and scene files in the same parent folder….?

Or do you put stuff wherever you see fit.
Also does Houdini 9 have default paths it searches?

I get disorganized very quickly
Thanx

m.d.
I am a LW and Maya convert….and am used to having content directories.

Is there a proper way to organize your file structure on a single workstation.

For example all geometry and scene files in the same parent folder….?

Or do you put stuff wherever you see fit.
Also does Houdini 9 have default paths it searches?

I get disorganized very quickly
Thanx

It of course depends on how much work you plan on doing, and how organized you want to stay. You could consider creating two directory hierarchies, one called ‘jobs’ (for all the lightweight .hip files, shaders, otls, etc., i.e. all data created via your hard work) and one called something like ‘pix’ or ‘data’ (for all the heavyweight data, e.g. ifd files, rendered images, etc. i.e. computer generated data. The next level down would be the name of the project, then under jobs/projectname you would have a hip directory, a houdini directory, etc. and under the pix/projectname directory you would have a directory for each ROP's worth of output (maybe further separating ifd, tif, etc. subdirectories).

The kicker with the above setup is that you have to make a bunch of directories. You could write yourself a little script that takes the looks at where the files are going to go from inside a ROP, and in the pre-render script, put in something that makes the directory hierarchies before ifd writing/rendering begins.

As far as default paths, yes, there are many. Do an ‘hconfig -a’, and search for ‘PATH’, and you'll see all the various types of searchpaths that Houdini supports. The main one is HOUDINI_PATH.

– Antoine

The method described in “The Magic of Houdini” is very similar. You can create a “user” folder at your root level or in your Home directory. My Documents if your on Windows. Then inside make two folders “job” and “data”, then point two environment variables at them for quick reference inside Houdini.

Also, you may have already noticed, but the $HIP variable will be set once you have saved your file, so you can just use that if you don't want to make other variables.

Typically inside the Job folder I'll create subdirectories called “hip”, “pic”, “out”, “map”, “geo” and occasionally “sim” for baking dynamics stuff.

I'm very new to all this as well, but that works for me.

Thats a very good tip !. I also alter the jump.prefs file, located in your user directory ie
C:\Documents and Settings\circusmonkey\My Documents\houdini9.1\jump.PREF
I add a path like GProjects_vfx_houdini. Then when you use File open , you will see a list of your Jump paths to folders for a quick and handy navigation.

r

Thanks for the replies…..

makes sense….

houdini is so non-traditional I find myself questioning everything…..even the obvious.

just a note about C:\Documents and Settings\USER\My Documents\

DON'T USE IT!

Houdini doesn't like spaces in paths…

if you are on Windows make a new environment variable called HOME
and point it to a directory at the root of a drive
eg: D:\YOUR_USER_NAME

then do all your work there….

also have a look at this thread:

http://forums.odforce.net/index.php?showtopic=659 [forums.odforce.net]

it's a bit old but there is some good info on Houdini and how to build directory structures…

arctor
just a note about C:\Documents and Settings\USER\My Documents\

DON'T USE IT!

Houdini doesn't like spaces in paths…

if you are on Windows make a new environment variable called HOME
and point it to a directory at the root of a drive
eg: D:\YOUR_USER_NAME

then do all your work there….

also have a look at this thread:

http://forums.odforce.net/index.php?showtopic=659 [forums.odforce.net]

it's a bit old but there is some good info on Houdini and how to build directory structures…

Just trying to make sure I follow 100%. I'm on Linux most of the time so it doesn't matter much, but I am curious about what you're saying.

I have a secondary machine with XP that runs Apprentice with the $HOME set to “My Documents” as thats the default location where Houdini places it's user data. My question though, is the way Houdini deals with this and spacing. I have noticed for example when I define a new Operator type from the File menu the OTL path reads similar to this.

CDOCUME~1/user/MYDOCU~1/houdini9.1

So, it seems that Houdini has it's own way of dealing with the spaces, but I'm guessing from your post that this isn't very sound way of handling the issue. Just curious, what problems could the above cause?