T Frog

Hi everyone,

I recently created an HDA based on a Karma Material Builder, which I wanted to use as a preset in Solaris. However, the HDA never appeared in the Material Library LOP’s Tab menu, even though the asset was installed correctly.

The actual requirement for the Material Library to pick up a custom Material Builder is very simple:
The Material Library will only list HDAs whose names match the pattern defined in its Tab Menu Mask. By default this includes *builder, but you’re not limited to that. You can use any custom naming convention for your HDA and simply add that keyword to the Material Library’s Tab Menu Mask. If you want to keep this setup permanently, you can also save your customized Material Library node as the new permanent default, so it always uses your preferred mask and automatically recognizes your custom material assets.

In my case, I also wanted two additional behaviors for convenience:

the node should automatically be editable when created

the Material flag should be enabled

These are not required by Solaris, but they improve the usability of the asset. To achieve this, I added the following OnCreated Python script inside the HDA:

lop_node = hou.pwd()
node = kwargs
node.allowEditingOfContents()
node.setGenericFlag(hou.nodeFlag.Material, True)

With the correct naming and the optional setup script in place, the HDA finally appeared inside the Material Library and behaved exactly the way I wanted. I’m sharing this in case anyone else runs into the same issue or wants similar behavior for custom Material Builder HDAs.