Hello there… Im having some problems with rmands. When i run it with


rmands -d dsomewhere -L myrmanshads.olt myshaders.slo


I get the right dialog.. the only problem is when I load the otl some of the parameters come in with a type I dont like… for instance most of my strings come up as a file type parameter . This is not terribly bad , but I would like to edit the dialog so that I can turn some of these strings into drop down choice menus, check boxes (for booleans) and things like that (I really like how I can do this for vex shaders). but when I edit the otl file it gets ruined… (houdini wont load it anymore)
I could also do the dialogs with *.ds, but the scripting documentation refers to what I believe is an older file strucutre used in 5.0, I cant find the files or folders they tell me to use to have houdini load my *.ds automatically.
Can someone please help.. Thanks

cheers

Rcortes

rcortes
but when I edit the otl file it gets ruined… (houdini wont load it anymore)

Hmm… when you say you "edit the otl file", you mean litterally opening up the file and editing it with a text editor? If yes, then that explains why Houdini won't open it up. Despite appearances, these files have portions that are binary. I don't wnow all the details, but I can pretty much guarantee you that the header is (likely among other things) a binary “otl_section” table indexing into the rest of the file – i.e: change anything beyond this and all the offsets in the table become invalid :shock: … luckily, you don't need to hack the file – they give you tools to edit these things 8)

Once you've created your otl and loaded it into Houdini, make an instance of it in, say, “ /shop”, RMB on it and select “Type Properties” from the popup menu. This brings up a dialog that allows you to change just about everything in your Op, including adding/deleting/rearranging parameters, as well as changing the widget type assosiated with them (equiv of a #pragma hint in a VEX source file).

To hand-edit the actual dialog section of the OTL (assuming the above doesn't allow you to do what you want), select “Tools -> Operator Type Manager” from the main menu. In the Operators tab find your OP (likely under “Operator Type Libraries -> CurrentHipFile ->…”.
RMB on the entry for your OP_Type (Shop/myRmanShader) and select “Edit Contents…” from the popup. This brings up a dialog that you can use to edit each section of an OTL (well, the non-binary ones at least). And this is what you'd use if you wanted to muck about with Houdini's dialog-script syntax.

Hope that helps.

That worked perfectly!!!.
Once again you guys from xyz come out to my rescue.. Thanks so much for your help.

cheers
Rcortes