What is the proper way to update to a new build of HE for Unity?

I am on a Mac. I know how to update Houdini; but once I do Unity complains about the installed version.

I've discovered that when updating the unity houdini engine in the past that when allowing the overwriting of the previous version that on occasion the install did become corruptive in Unity5 by not allowing my previously saved layout to load properly, however I've figured out a very stable way to install it without any loading issues by first manually removing the previous installed houdini engine folders located in “User/Shared/Unity/Default/Assets/Houdini -&-
Houdini Script Access” folders first.

After that I relaunch Unity & navigate back to the “Applications/Houdini 14.0.???/Houdini Engine/unity/” double click the “houdini-engine.scripts.unitypackage”. It will open an install window in Unity listing the contents of the plug-in. It'll install perfectly fine & runs very stable.

I've been doing this method for every Houdini daily build without hiccups, but this feels a bit high maintenance to me & hope sidefx will include an actual uninstaller for the Houdini Engine that works like the Houdini App uninstaller in a future release.

kwiknip's solution is pretty much the recommended way to do it. I wish I can make things more painless but it's difficult to know where to uninstall Houdini Engine for Unity from and where not to do it from.

If your project is locked to, say, 14.0.291, and you update to 14.0.292, the installer can't assume you want to update your Unity project's code, let alone find where your project is located.

Until we come up with something better or Unity adds more support for plugin updates, this manual re-installing of the scripts is the way to go.

Ok, that makes sense.

Is there a way to tell Houdini Engine to use an older installed version?

For instance, if I have an issue in Houdini that only affects Houdini (like a display issue, or a bug fix) and I install a daily build when the awesome Houdini support fixes a bug, but I don't need Unity to pick up that build, how to I tell HE to use the one that I was using before?

If I can't do this, or if it's too complicated, I'll just update using the above instructions.

Dave

As long as you don't uninstall the previous Houdini when upgrading, you can continue using the Houdini Engine plugin tied to the previous Houdini in your Unity project.

In this case, the fact that Houdini does not automatically upgrade your Houdini Engine for Unity plugin is a feature.

In general, you control which version of Houdini you want Unity to use by installing the Unity plugin scripts from that specific version of Houdini. The scripts have to match the version of Houdini so there can't be a simple setting in Unity that can switch Houdini versions.

i tried to follow this and obviously i failed at one step… new assets are created fine with no problem but old ones D=, also duplicating assets is now stable!! i will throw a party today for that! everyone is invited.

Ya…the way Unity works (the way it serializes data for saving/loading/undo/redo) makes it hard to maintain backwards compatibility. It's a known issue but it will take some time to sort out.