I am trying to create a few custom VOP OTL's that will be part of a sort of ‘higher level’ modular shading toolkit for use at the studio and have run into what seems to be a UI issue that I can't seem to resolve - bear with me this might take a while to explain…
also please excuse me if I am missing something obvious - am fairly new to Houdini and OTL's
anyway - I want some of the parameters used inside these OTLs to be wirable (ie passed into the subnet via the sub-input node), but some of them I just want to be parameters that show up on the parameters tab of the OTL without actual inputs - otherwise the input connections on the OTL get very overcrowded (ie difficult to use) and many of the parameters really don't need to accept input connections (ie toggles and switches for stuff mostly)
however it seems that to pass a parameter value into the OTL they HAVE to be wirable inputs (in which case I can add the same parameter to the parameters type properties and this seems to ‘link’ up with the input - ie its editable in the parameters tab if it doesn't have an input, and is greyed out if it does)
if I define the parameter (ie using a parameter VOP) without an input connection inside the OTL then it doesn't seem to ‘promote’ (not sure if this is the correct use of the term) it to the OTL parameters tab at all and if I add a similarly named parameter there manually it doesn;t seem tp pass that into the OTL where I want it to
what it DOES do is add these ‘internal’ parameters to the shader level (ie if the OTL is used inside a VEX surfaceSHOP for example) parameters tab and pass that instead but thats definately not what I want - ie these parameters need to be ‘local’ to the VOP OTL and tweaked there, rather than shader level (if for no other reason than because there may well be more than one instance of the OTL inside a shader and they need to maintain their own local values for these parameters)
so in summary:
if parameter is passed as input then I can have a ‘local’ parameter interface for the OTL (but also an input connection)
if parameter is NOT passed as an input then I can't (but it shows up at the shader level instead and appears to be ‘global’ - ie it will affect all instances)
so - is this correct?
am I missing something entirely? (I must admit that I have found configuring OTL's properly to be much more difficult than I had thought it might be)
is there anyway round this? (ie having a ‘local’ parameter interface to internal params without having a n input or at least being able to disable the input connection somehow…)
thx in advance for any light
Stu Aitken
axis animation