Hi guys! sorry if this seems to be a bit of a newbie question-did a bit of scouring the forums to see if I could find an answer first but…
basically trying to set the $HIP variable in my houdini.env file. I've done this fine for the $JOB variable but for some reason doing the same stuff with $HIP doesn't seem to work, its like the variable is getting overridden somewhere else before houdini launches but I'm not sure where.
My houdini.env looks a bit like this
JOB=/path/to/job
HIP=/path/to/job/hip
and I've tried variations on this (ie specifying the hip variable first) but nothing seems to work
I know its possible to get round the problem setting the $HIP variable through the interface (Aliases and Variables) although I seem to have to do this for every session of houdini that I open up- but wondered how to fix this for the houdini.env file and get that working. Thanks in advance!

$HIP is supposed to always point to where the .hip file is saved. It's reset whenever you save or load a .hip file.

Hi Edward thanks for the reply-I probably didn't explain myself very well I was wondering about opening a new hip in Houdini rather than old/current hip files (ie when you first launch houdini from scratch) but maybe it isn't something that can be done. I'm guessing it probably isn't a problem in production because the job and shot environments are already setup for you so that you are already launching Houdini from the shot directory that you want to grab your hip files from (and you are always launching it from a terminal). If I launch houdini from the dock, the $HIP always points to my root directory (regardless of what i've specified in houdini.env) and $JOB points to what I have specified in houdini.env (ie where my houdini folder is). Sorry if that sounds a bit convoluted. Just wondered if there was a way around it, guess I'll just have to live with it, thanks anyway!

Sorry, I think I misread what you were getting at.

I think it's kinda strange that would open with $HIP in your root directory. I would expect it to open with $HIP = $HOME. Perhaps log a bug to get this fixed eventually (see Support menu above).

In addition to setting HIP in your houdini.env, try copying the 123.cmd from the installation (Command Line Tools > cp $HH/123.cmd $HOME/houdini12.5), fix permissions so that you can read/write to it, and then add at the end “ucd /path/to/hip”.

Hi Edward, thanks for the advice! Was able to do what you said (or a variation on it). It unfortunately hasn't worked with the $HIP variable but I know that it is doing something or is at least being referenced because if I type upwd into a textport in the new hip, the path is right (ie the path specified with the ucd command). If I comment out the ucd line and relaunch houdini, this returns / instead. Thanks for the help though!

You can open up Houdini, set it up the way you like with variables and save that hip file something like start.hip in a central location.

Copy that hip file in to your work/project directory, double click and $HIP will be set.

Hi Jeff! Not sure I've understood you properly.. when you say a central location for saving the start.hip are you talking about $HOME or somewhere in houdini.frameworks? Thanks, Rachel

Naw I'm talking about a crude copy the .hip file in to the target directory and double click to start from the file browser.

still doesn't work-when i launch any file from the file browser it opens an untitled.hip rather than the file I've clicked on but I'm using an older version of houdini v11 and its apprentice (don't know if that would affect it). (The untitled hip still has $HIP set to /) thanks for the suggestion though! Anyway I think I'm happy to leave things as they are-it just seems odd that you can't specify it in the env file. Thanks for all the help everyone!

Hello I have some newbie questions about the environment variables.

I want to organize my files in the following way:
User prefs in : C:\Users\%usernane%\AppData\Roaming\Sidefx\houdini16.0
Personal Houdini files in : C:\Users\%usernane%\Documents\My houdini projects

In Houdini.env I already set this :
HOUDINI_USER_PREF_DIR = “C:\Users\%usernane%\AppData\Roaming\Sidefx\houdini16.0”

Now for the other variables:
1) What is the “home” directory for? User prefs or user personal files? Can I set it in Houdini.env?
2) What is the difference between $hip and $job? Which one of these 2 should be pointing to “My houdini projects”? Can I set them in Houdini.env?

Thanks and see you,
Gz