I'm working on a Python module in which at some point I'm using hou.nodeTypeCategoriesto determine type category of operators.
Some of those categories are obvious, like "Sop", "Cop2", ChopNet", etc. Others required some investigation, like the "Driver", which stands for ROP for some reason.
There are however three categories that I am unable to decipher:

• Director,
  
• Manager,
  
• VopNet - definitely not used by VOP Networks.
  

For example:
is not of "VopNet", but of "Sop" type category (or of whichever context we created the VOP Network in). If we were to compare it with a ChopNet created inside the "ch" context, we get ChopNettype category. But there's no separate context for VOPs, and no VopNets can be created inside VOPs networks. I'm not sure if I'm expressing myself clear here.

My question, directed mostly to our favorite Devs, is which nodes, and in which contexts, are using those three type categories?

just from top of my head, without further investigating, I recall that

Director is the root so "/"
Managers are any context nodes, hit Tab and you can see them in Managers submenu
VOPnet is the old VEXBuilder network where you can define VEX shaders for different contexts using VOPs, its not as used nowadays, but it had it's advantages as you can have your definitions in one place in the scene without creating HDAs etc...

Director is the root so "/"

Great. I think I can ignore it in my module for the time being, but it may have its uses in later iterations. To be honest, I would have probably never figured this one out without you.

Managers are any context nodes, hit Tab and you can see them in Managers submenu

Are you sure about this? For example, a dopnetManager created inside /chcontext still inherits a Choptype category. Could you perhaps provide a HOM code example of a Manager which returns specifically the Managertype category?

VOPnet is the old VEXBuilder (...)

Is the VexBuilder deprecated nowadays? If not, could you be so kind (again! ) to provide an example of a node that is of o VopNet type category? Maybe I could simply drop this category from my module, if it isn't used anymore.

All the different categories have corresponding hou methods to create their objects and the help on those functions is pretty descriptive to help answer your questions:


tamte is right in that "Managers" are any node type in any context that is for putting other node types into, though in regards to manager node type category, that is for top level manager nodes which aren't really nodes (/obj, /out, etc)

Another excellent advice. Thanks.

While browsing help for hou.managerNodeTypeCategory, I've noticed that among others it lists /partmanager. What is it used for? Or rather what was it used for, because I believe that currently this path doesn't exist anymore, as hou.node('/part')returns NoneType.

ajz3d
/part manager. What is it used for?

old POPs, it used to be a separate context before POPs were recreated as subset of DOPs

Particles. Gosh, I could have guessed it.