Collecting project files in houdini

   12209   9   2
User Avatar
Member
11 posts
Joined: March 2007
Offline
Is there a way to collect files like in after effects?
User Avatar
Member
339 posts
Joined: Dec. 2014
Offline
I'm sure you could collect file dependecies with a script, but the best practice is to have all your dependencies in Houdini point to $JOB or another arbitrary variable. If $JOB is set to for example /projects/Houdini/mycoolshit all the files needed will be in /mycoolshit making it simple to back up or move. In the render menu you can run Pre-Flight Scene to check that all dependencies are relative to $JOB or $HIP
User Avatar
Staff
3463 posts
Joined: July 2005
Offline
Have a look at Render > Pre-Flight Scene
Michael Goldfarb | www.odforce.net
Training Lead
SideFX
www.sidefx.com
User Avatar
Member
977 posts
Joined: April 2008
Offline
Hi, I've bumped in to this thread look for the information on how to collect files in Houdini and since you guys got already here I have to ask:

is there something build in Houdini that automatically collect the files to a directory?
https://vimeo.com/user2163076 [vimeo.com]
User Avatar
Member
655 posts
Joined: Feb. 2006
Offline
Not like AFX and traversing the whole scene is certainly not trivial so as stated, your friend is the Pre-Flight and work in a way that makes things easy to port from the start.

This should be a good tool to put together… mmm… will have to think about it.
User Avatar
Member
314 posts
Joined: Jan. 2013
Online
It seems to me that it is possible for a Houdinian to make such a tool, but there are several reasons that will complicate the development.

1) Contexts. Go through all the contexts of Houdini and see what there is easy. And how to solve the problem when different nodes will refer to a cache with the same name, but are in different directories?

2) Slow copying of data. Imagine how many will take the collection of files of a large project, where there will be many gigabyte caches of data simulation, textures, models and other. But this can last for hours and even days.

And to compare still with programs that do not deal with such heavy calculations is not entirely correct.
User Avatar
Member
21 posts
Joined: May 2017
Offline
Try this script
https://github.com/Aeoll/HipCollector [github.com]
Edited by aekorps - Nov. 9, 2020 12:58:41
User Avatar
Member
212 posts
Joined: Dec. 2016
Offline
IS there a version that works with usd referenced files ?
User Avatar
Member
460 posts
Joined: Feb. 2012
Online
The Labs archive project
User Avatar
Member
576 posts
Joined: Aug. 2014
Offline
sepu
The Labs archive project
Interesting. I wasn't aware of this TOP, so thanks for mentioning it.

One question though. I heavily rely on symlinks pointing to shared resource files located outside of $JOBhierarchy. Will this TOP follow symlinks and replace them with target files before archiving the project? Documentation doesn't mention it.
  • Quick Links