Hello!

I am quite new to Houdini and, to learn, I am following various tutorials.

Unfortunatly, each time I need to link an external texture into Houdini (for an env light or as a map reference for instance) I get the pink result.

This issue happened to me in Houdini 15.5 as well as 16.

My impression is that there is a problem with the path Houdini create, but I couldn't seem to be able to make it work.

I have tried to change the path from using the HIP path to a more direct approach, changing the location of the external asset to various location, and using different file format such as jpg, tif, and png as well. No success.

This is pretty annoying as I would like to be able to have access to external data while working in Houdini, but I don't have any more ideas.

Does any of you ever had that kind of issue? What could be the matter?

Thanks!

Could you post a HIP file demonstrating the issue? If you're on Windows, you have to use forward slashes instead of backslashes in your file paths, so that could be one issue, but it's hard to know without a HIP file.

I would gladly share a hip with the issue. I am only wondering how should I send you the file linked to the Hip? Surely this would be as relevant as the actual Houdini setup?

I am using forward slashes too, so this should be fine…

If they're small and you're okay with them being public, you can attach them to a forum post. Click the “Add an attachment” button below the reply text area, and click the “+ more” text to add another.

Here is the Hip file, the actual texture as well as a screen shot of what is happening on my side.

Thanks a lot!

Ah, the name in the file path was “Basic_2K_$F.jpg” instead of “Basic_2K_14.jpg”. Since it's rendering on frame 1, $F is 1, so it was looking for “Basic_2K_1.jpg”, which doesn't exist. When selecting single files in the file chooser dialog, when the filenames have numbers in them, you often have to turn off “Show sequences as one entry”. It's gotten me several times, too.

Yes! It's now working properly on all my files!

Many thanks!

Tomorrow's build, Houdini 16.0.569, will at least have single files not show up as sequences, so hopefully that will reduce some of these issues.

After some discussion, the colours for $F and the frame range in any file sequence have been made more prominent in 16.0.569, (as in the attached image), to make it more clear that something is up.

Great ideas. Should reduce some of those “oops” moments.

imo, the default ‘Show sequences as one entry’ should be off for image types.

Short of plate-projected image sequences (which, admittedly, does happen), most texture maps tend to be static but versioned, which trips up the file selector.

Drives me NUTS.

G