I have been trying to set up my own desktop, but it seems to becomming more confusing the more I mess around with desktop saving options.

First, how do I get rid of the icon toolbar on top of viewer pane?

Second, I had set up my custom desktop but accidentally saved it as the “Animate” desktop. Is there any way to revert the “Animate” desktop to default setup (as when Houdini was installed)?

Third, how do I have my custom desktop load up automatically everytime I run Houdini?

Thanks

I have been trying to set up my own desktop, but it seems to becomming more confusing the more I mess around with desktop saving options.

Not sure about all the platforms, but I know that on Linux the ability to write-protect your custom desktop is busted. When you're finished, go to $HOME/houdini6.1/desktop and change the name of your desktop yu want to write-protect from:

foo.desk

to

foo.desk.nosave


The Desktop manager seems to be doing it, but it's not, really. Next time you start Houdini, they're unprotected.

First, how do I get rid of the icon toolbar on top of viewer pane?

menu: Pane/Toolbars and Controls/ and select/deselect “Operator Toolbar”. It was a little hard for me to find, too.

Second, I had set up my custom desktop but accidentally saved it as the “Animate” desktop. Is there any way to revert the “Animate” desktop to default setup (as when Houdini was installed)?

I strongly recommend creating all the custom desktops you want with your own names, and just “hide” the distro versions when you're done. Anyway, are you on Windows? If so, it's possible you've literally overwritten the desktop description in “hfs”(I'm not sure how well permissions are handled in Windows/Houdini). If you're on Linux, all is well as you wouldn't have permission to alter it. The Desktop Manager(Alt-Shift-D) tells you where the desktops are located. You probably are using an “Animate” that sits in $HOME/houdini6.1/desktop - unhide the one that's in the original distribution. If you've accidentally overrwritten that, here's what I have from the distro(be very careful for line-wrap!).

*******************************CUT HERE
fullscreen -1
playbar -1
split 0.5 V {
split 0.392913 H {
pane pane1 -a 0 -C 1 -c 1 -l 1 -h /obj -m viewer
split 0.498433 H {
pane pane2 -a 0 -C 1 -c 1 -l 1 -h /obj -m parmeditor
pane pane4 -a 0 -C 1 -c 1 -l 1 -h /obj -m neteditor
}
}
pane pane3 -a 0 -C 1 -c 1 -l 1 -h /obj -m chaneditor
}
viewerstow -t 1 -x 0 -b 0 -l 0 Animate.pane1.world
vieweroption -a 1 Animate.pane1.world
neteditor -G 0.75 -P 0.8 -p 0 -c 0 -o 0 -n 1 -s 2 -x 0 -e 0 -I 0 -z 1 -S user pane4
chaneditor -m 0 -s * -a 1 -b 1 -c 1 -e 1 -f 1 -g 1 -j 0 -l 1 -n 0 -o 1 -p 1 -q 0 -u 0.1 -v 1 -B 0 -C 2 -A 0 -F 0 -D 0.245742 -E 0.2 -w 1 -x 0 -y 0 -z 0 -G 1 -h 1 300 -i 1 300 pane3
********************************** CUT HERE

Personally, I hate the way the desktops are sorted based on alphabetics - the first thing I did was make my own with numbers in the lead to help keep things sorted the way I want: e.g. 01_Build, 02_Model, 03_Animate, etc.

Third, how do I have my custom desktop load up automatically everytime I run Houdini?

Not sure why this isn't working by default. Are you using the Desktop Manager? It handles all this for you…

Cheers,

J.C.

Hi there,

Desktops are not working all that well in 6.1.149 & that has been submitted as a bug report. In the meantime, you should be able to copy custom desktops made in 6.0 to 6.1.

I would name your own custom desktop as “Build” as a simple solution to get it to load everytime. If you want to know the details, please let me know & I'll post it here.

Cheers!
steven

Thanks for info guys. Steven, I did exactly as you mentioned and seems to work: I simply loaded “Build”, rearranged the panes the way I like them and saved it as the new “Build” desktop.

cool!

Thanks 8)

A couple of things which may help:

- You can turn off Autosave Desktops in the preferences (Settings->Main Prefs->Destops&Toolbars, “Save Desktops Automatically”). When on, which it is by default, this setting will save your current desktop when you quit Houdini, which is probably how you overwrote the Animate desk. Note that you'll have to explicitly save desktops after doing this (File->Save Current Desktop when you have the desk arranged the way you'd like).

- The desk you start up in is defined in your 123.cmd file, at the end of the file. Look for it in $HFS/houdini/scripts, copy it to your home houdini directory (~/houdini6.1) and edit it there.