Seems like metahuman nodes are not working on Linux at all?
Is there any way to have that to work or we are forced to use windows for any metahuman related work?

Have you tried downloading the linux build for the plugin?

There is no linux build. Documents also say unpack on windows then copy to linux. But tested only on rocky 8 so...

Hi Mirko, I've tracked this down to an issue with how the MetaHuman plugin was built on Linux. As released on FAB right now, it only works if your Houdini installation was installed at /opt/hfs21.0.440. A workaround for this is to add the correct dsolib directory to your LD_LIBRARY_PATH prior to starting Houdini, something like this in bash:

I'll be contacting the Epic folks on this so hopefully the next release of the MetaHuman plugin for Houdini won't require this workaround anymore.

I thought I'd leave this for anyone installing this on linux and scratching their heads like me for a while.

At the moment of this post the plugin only seems to work on Houdini 21.0.440 specifically, any higher version will load all the otls except the crucial mh_dna_import which is a dso and only seems to be loaded in that specific version (thanks to edward's post I decided to try that version and it worked).

I have all my houdini installations at /opt/hfs21.x.xxx so I didn't need the suggested workaround to make it work.

It's a shame since the windows version of the plugin does seem to work on recent versions of houdini, I don't know if there is another workaround for this or if it's the way Epic compiled that dso in linux that only allows for that specific version.


ADDED EDIT:

So... after not being able to open the mh_dna_import node in more recent houdini builds, I was able to open it in the specific 21.0.440. However today I was working again in a more recent houdini build, and noticed that the node is now available. I have no idea how dso nodes work but I imagine that since it was opened correctly in 21.0.440 it is now cached somewhere? and working fine in recent builds as well... or some kind of magic like that. Either that or I hallucinated not being able to open it in higher builds before.. which I doubt because it took me a long time and several trials in different versions to make it work.


TLDR; if you are missing mh_dna_import node from the metahuman plugin, load it in 21.0.440 and it becomes available in older builds as well.

Hi Folks, I discussed this again with Epic and they've made a new MetaHuman plugin release! Please try the new version in the Epic Games Launcher, it should work with any Houdini version.

robonilla
TLDR; if you are missing mh_dna_import node from the metahuman plugin, load it in 21.0.440 and it becomes available in older builds as well.

This was the issue I alluded to earlier. Because it had a hard coded path to /opt/hfs21.0.440, it would load in any Houdini version as long as you had a Houdini 21.0.440 system installed at that exact path.