And vice versa, if I manually save a take, I can't load it back with python.
Is there any reason for this behavior?
What I noticed is that take files saved with python come with hexadecimal encoding (don't know if it's the correct term).
Also, reading from hou.Take.loadChildTakeFromFile(filename) help:
Note that you can only load files that have been saved from the same .hip file session. If Houdini is restarted or if the .hip file is closed and re-opened after the save then the file will fail to load.
This seems misleading or I don't understand it.
I was able to load a take saved with python in a new hip file, and in a different version of houdini (17 vs 16.5), given that the new hip file has the same structure.