Hey all,

I'm trying to set the environment variable HOUDINI_USER_PREF_DIR - to a specific folder.

I have other environment variables working perfectly, but I cannot get this one to work regardless of whether I use a windows environment variable or place this inside the Houdini.env,

Everytime I open Houdini and check the shell using hconfig, it says my temp directory is set to the default directory,

does anyone have any ideas? My only guess is this is being set elsewhere and their fore overriding my manually created env varaibles.

(Ive checked spelling etc. and this is what my windows env variable looks like; name = ‘HOUDINI_USER_PREF_DIR’, value = ‘D:\Houdiniprefs’ )

Thanks
Chris.

Here's how I fixed this issue.

Create folder to store your houdini pref. For example "C:\HOUDINI\houdini_prefs"
Create another folder in "C:\HOUDINI\houdini_prefs" and name it "houdini__HVER__"

Click Windows button
Type "en"
Select "Edit the system environment variables"
"System Properties" window will pop-up

Click "Environment Variables"
"Environment Variables" window will pop-up

Click "New" in the top pane to create a new user variable (NOT system variable)
"Edit user variable" window will pop-up

Enter HOUDINI_USER_PREF_DIR in Variable Name
Enter "C:\HOUDINI\houdini_prefs\houdini__HVER__" in Variable Value (Please note its imperative to have houdini__HVER__ folder)
Click "OK" in the "Edit user variable" pop-up

Click "OK" in "Environment Variables" pop-up

Click "OK" in "System Properties" pop-up

Place your existing houdini21.0 (if any) preference folder inside of "C:\HOUDINI\houdini_prefs" (NOT inside houdini__HVER__)

Restart computer

Launch Houdini