So I'm quite confused here. I'm trying to essentially make HDAs and shelves and other assets that are project-specific in Houdini, and from what I understand, as long as I put them in subfolders that are in the same as the $HIP directory, Houdini should automatically find them? From following along with the Houdini tutorials, it seems like this should be the case (and for placing HDAs in $HIP/otls this seems to work for specific hipfiles (i.e. if I create a HDA from a hipfile and place the HDA in the $HIP/otls folder, it's able to find it on the next time I open that hipfile).

However, this does not seem to work for shelves if I save them in $HIP/toolbar.

Also, this does not seem to work for project files that are saved in the same folder directory; they do not have access to the same HDAs that reside in the /otls subfolder.

Could someone please explain what exactly one is supposed to do wrt this?

The folder structure I imagine is conventionally used (and what I'm using) is such:

+ root
- hipfile1.hip
- hipfile2.hip
/otls
/otls/hda.hda
/toolbar/shelf.shelf

I've tried editing my houdini.env to have the following contents:

HOUDINI_OTLSCAN_PATH = $HIP/otls/;&

HOUDINI_TOOLBAR_PATH = $HIP/toolbar;&

If I add HOUDINI_PATH = $HIP/;& then Houdini refuses to launch at all.

I've tried adding a 456.cmd script in $HIP/scripts that also tries to set the environment variables as well using set command. Doesn't work either.

I feel like something like this shouldn't be so difficult, and that I'm misunderstanding the documentation in this regard? If someone could comprehensively detail how to set shelves, HDAs and other stuff to be hipfile-specific, I'd appreciate it very much!

As an update, setting in houdini.env:

HOUDINI_PATH = $HIP;&

Allows HDAs to work as I expect once I open a new scene and choose Assets > Refresh Asset Libraries, but toolbars still do not auto install, nor can I find them in the shelf sets that I can add.

Additionally, is there any way I can manually force a refresh of the asset libraries on every new scene load, and is this a bad idea?

EDIT: Hmm, I have the following 456.py script:

http://pastebin.com/bNHfiwZJ [pastebin.com]

It kind of works, but only on the 2nd scene that I load; it doesn't seem to pick up HDAs the first time I open a scene. Also, it seems to make Houdini incredibly unstable, if I start swapping scenes within the project, Houdini eventually crashes with a Fatal Segmentation Fault error.

Could anyone advise on what I might be doing wrong here?

Hi Yi,

I know this is an old topic.

Did you find a good solution for this. I am trying to find the best way to do this. I am not really a scripter but am wondering what the best way to get houdini to see job related HDA's etc.

Cheers