Houdini comes with a help system. However, it seems to only work when Houdini is running, and the html is somehow generated on the fly.
Is there a way to 'compile' the offline docs as htmls (or dumps the houdini wiki markup)?
Where can I download/generate the offline docs for Houdini?
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- raincole
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- johnmather
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- raincole
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johnmather
Take a look at the hhelp application:hhelp --help
Thank you. But I tried
hhelp generate [DIRNAME]and it only generates html without css/images, making it pretty much non-human-readable.I checked the doc: https://www.sidefx.com/docs/houdini/help/central.html [www.sidefx.com]
But it's very confusing. It says:
First, set up the directory structure as in setting up central server directories.
without mentioning how.
It shows a directory structure like this:
central/
files/
icons/
...
images/
...
videos/
...
static/
...
But where are these files? How exactly do I set up these icons, images, etc?
Edited by raincole - March 3, 2026 00:52:12
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- johnmather
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You should just need to create that structure. In bash, you can do the following:
It will then start populating those folders with the static documentation files.
mkdir central mkdir -p central/files/icons mkdir -p central/files/images mkdir -p central/files/videos mkdir -p central/files/scripts cd central hhelp generate files
It will then start populating those folders with the static documentation files.
Edited by johnmather - March 3, 2026 01:22:13
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- raincole
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johnmather
You should just need to create that structure. In bash, you can do the following:mkdir central mkdir -p central/files/icons mkdir -p central/files/images mkdir -p central/files/videos mkdir -p central/files/scripts cd central hhelp generate files
It will then start populating those folders with the static documentation files.
Is it bugged on Windows? I ensured that these directories exist. However they're still empty after I run
hhelp generate fileshhelp generate filesdoes generate the html files and many directories. It takes quite a while. But it doesn't populate icons, images, videos etc for me. These directories are still empty after the generation finishes.The html files are correctly generated and they do expect the image files to be in images:
But there is nothing.
Edited by raincole - March 3, 2026 02:04:51
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- elovikov
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human readable or llm readable?
for llm just point your agent to $HFS/houdini/help with a bit of a context
it's just a directory with txt files or zips that also just contains txt files, currently any agent cli tool is capable to just read zipped text (you just like give it a context that to get documentation for sop/name go for $HFS/houdini/help/nodes.zip/sop/name.txt)
those are not markdown (unfortunately) but close enough so any model have no problems with it
the docs are actually very well structured for llms to consume
for llm just point your agent to $HFS/houdini/help with a bit of a context
it's just a directory with txt files or zips that also just contains txt files, currently any agent cli tool is capable to just read zipped text (you just like give it a context that to get documentation for sop/name go for $HFS/houdini/help/nodes.zip/sop/name.txt)
those are not markdown (unfortunately) but close enough so any model have no problems with it
the docs are actually very well structured for llms to consume
Edited by elovikov - March 3, 2026 05:24:15
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- raincole
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It's very interesting that
1. I didn't mention 'LLM' or 'AI' or 'model' or 'agent' at all
2. I had mentioned that I'm aware of houdini\help folder
3. I specifically said 'human-readable'.
4. I specifically asked how to get the css and image files, which are not needed for LLM
but someone still felt the need to bring LLM into this topic.
(I have nothing against LLM, but it's such an interesting behavior)
1. I didn't mention 'LLM' or 'AI' or 'model' or 'agent' at all
2. I had mentioned that I'm aware of houdini\help folder
3. I specifically said 'human-readable'.
4. I specifically asked how to get the css and image files, which are not needed for LLM
but someone still felt the need to bring LLM into this topic.
(I have nothing against LLM, but it's such an interesting behavior)
Edited by raincole - March 3, 2026 11:36:38
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- johnmather
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- raincole
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johnmather
Have you tried extracting $HFS/houdini/help/images.zip into your newly created images folder?
It works, but
1. Is this really the 'official' way? Feels very hacky. The doc [www.sidefx.com] doesn't even hint that one needs to be aware of
$HFS/houdini/helpto serve static help files.2. Where is the css files? I checked the html and the css files are supposed to be in
staticfolder, but there is no $HFS/houdini/help/static.zip or something similar as far as I can tell.
Edited by raincole - March 3, 2026 18:42:03
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