Hello. I cant be the only one surely - shelf tools are just not showing up.
Im using h11.1.139 build.
I set HOUDINI_TOOLBAR_PATH=/Users/myname/houdini11.0/toolbar/

so i can isolate where the problems are and nothing makes sense here.
Desktops cant find default shelves, but thats not my main problem.
I cannot access the shelf tools i actually have living in this directory. Doesnt see them.
What must I do to see these>?
Also I am confused since some of these .shelf files are sets and some are shelf tools - how can i distinguish?

I was hoping to build a nice set of my own tools in this directory but so far i only managed to pick up one ‘empty’ shelf set .
There doesnt seem to be any way to ‘load’ a shelf tool into a set either.
Any help advice appreciated! Thanks.

You should put your shelf tools into $HOME/houdini11.1/toolbar subdirectory instead for Houdini 11.1.

Desktops cant find default shelves

if you define your own path variable, it should also include the directory $HH/toolbar/ to pick up the native tools and shelf definitions.

Otherwise, you can add new shelf set (from the drop down menu on the right of the shelving area). Then Right-Click on the shelf and Edit Shelf, to add any available tools).

Thanks for the responses, i isolated the path just to test which of my own sets are seen (which none are). I already was using a ${HFS} in my real path to toolbars.
Moving them to a new houdini11.1 directory made no difference at all even though my toolbar path is set to this.

I have rebuilt new shelves and remade the tools and updated the default.shelf file also (v important this!!) - these now load successfully.

I should add here - if the default.shelf file does not have a correct list of all the shelves and tools you want included in your session, you wont get them in your session. default.shelf is an odd name for such an important file though .

to test which of my own sets are seen

your sets should be available in the drop down menu under the down-arrow icon, (v), on the right side of the shelving area. They should show up in the Shelf Sets… submenu.

However, if any other shelf file, notably default.shelf, also contains a definition of the shelf set with the same name as in another shelf file (your own), then Houdini may arbitrarily pick one over the other. There is a long-standing RFE for shelf manager to show all such overrides and allow to pick which one to use.

Houdini creates default.shelf in case the original shelf file is not writable, to save any local changes user made.

Hello, I’m here to revive this old thread.

After loading a hip file in my startup script my shelves no longer work, I get the error,

cannot find the definition of the shelf set 'shelf_set_1' requested by the current desktop


Also, shelf tabs only shows <empty>
Anyone know what to do ?



I have tried loading manually with

hou.shelves.loadFile("/****/****/houdini19.5/toolbar/default.shelf")

Perhaps the startup scripts have set the Houdini search path (or shelt/toolbar search path) incorrectly.