Miroslav Šamánek
shamanek
About Me
3D environment generalist - www.shamanek.cz
EXPERTISE
Generalist
INDUSTRY
Film/TV
Houdini Skills
Availability
I am currently employed at ILM
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Recent Forum Posts
When can we expect a stable layout toolset? Dec. 21, 2025, 12:40 a.m.
I agree, it is very buggy and unreliable. There is not a single day working in Solaris without a random Python error.
Layout tools are a nightmare to use. Everyone who wants to make their lives easier needs to invest time and resources to create their own layout tools. Otherwise, it's unstable and unpredictable with every Houdini version.
In vanilla Houdini, you can't simply import a couple of USD assets and:
- scatter them without custom HDA (randomisations, piece weight attributes, primitive source controls, etc. all needs to be made from scratch, scatter and align node doesn't count as its features are very limited)
- duplicate them (stage manager changing pivots, messing up with primitive kinds or throwing random python erros. Duplicate LOP node makes messy names or exact same names of duplicates that are already in the scene - overwriting existing ones).
- modify existing point instances in an easy way - modify point instances LOP forces you to tweak things in SOPs, so you can't see what you are doing in the context without manually importing parts of the scene. It's usually very heavy, and mostly it's faster to tweak things with VEX instead.
- place them with layout LOP without adding assets to the gallery first, and prepare yourself to face a lot of Python errors. Not production-ready by any means.
As a paying customer of this very powerful, amazing software that I have been using for over 6 years now, I would expect that these basic things would already be solved for us without the need to make it on our own. And it's not just about HDAS but actual Python scripting to make things work properly with all USD functionality. Compared to other contexts in Houdini, LOPs still seem to be underdeveloped.
Layout tools are a nightmare to use. Everyone who wants to make their lives easier needs to invest time and resources to create their own layout tools. Otherwise, it's unstable and unpredictable with every Houdini version.
In vanilla Houdini, you can't simply import a couple of USD assets and:
- scatter them without custom HDA (randomisations, piece weight attributes, primitive source controls, etc. all needs to be made from scratch, scatter and align node doesn't count as its features are very limited)
- duplicate them (stage manager changing pivots, messing up with primitive kinds or throwing random python erros. Duplicate LOP node makes messy names or exact same names of duplicates that are already in the scene - overwriting existing ones).
- modify existing point instances in an easy way - modify point instances LOP forces you to tweak things in SOPs, so you can't see what you are doing in the context without manually importing parts of the scene. It's usually very heavy, and mostly it's faster to tweak things with VEX instead.
- place them with layout LOP without adding assets to the gallery first, and prepare yourself to face a lot of Python errors. Not production-ready by any means.
As a paying customer of this very powerful, amazing software that I have been using for over 6 years now, I would expect that these basic things would already be solved for us without the need to make it on our own. And it's not just about HDAS but actual Python scripting to make things work properly with all USD functionality. Compared to other contexts in Houdini, LOPs still seem to be underdeveloped.
Hqueue Karma Error - DLL load failed while importing etree. Oct. 15, 2025, 6:42 a.m.
Hi Rob,
awesome, that works well. Thank you!
awesome, that works well. Thank you!
Hqueue Karma Error - DLL load failed while importing etree. Oct. 13, 2025, 9:21 a.m.
Hi guys, hope you are all doing great.
I'm trying to figure out what is wrong with hqueue rendering on my machine. I set it all up, and everything works except Karma rendering.
Caching geometry and also USD for Karma is all fine.
However, Karma job always returns this error:
I've tried to put env variables with Houdini Python and Houdini instalation. But no luck. Job diagnostic information shows clearly that paths to access Python and Houdini installation are all correct. So I assume there must be a problem in the python itself.
I'm wondering if it's related to this bug fix. I wasn't able to try because every daily build available instantly crashes on my machine:
Thank you.
I'm trying to figure out what is wrong with hqueue rendering on my machine. I set it all up, and everything works except Karma rendering.
Caching geometry and also USD for Karma is all fine.
However, Karma job always returns this error:
Accessing "C:\Program Files\Side Effects Software\Houdini 21.0.440\python311\python3.11.exe" ... Traceback (most recent call last): File "C:\Program Files\Side Effects Software\Houdini 21.0.440\houdini\scripts\hqueue\hq_karma.py", line 23, in <module> import hqlib File "C:\Program Files\Side Effects Software\Houdini 21.0.440\houdini\scripts\hqueue\hqlib.py", line 17, in <module> import hqrop File "C:\Program Files\Side Effects Software\Houdini 21.0.440/houdini/python3.11libs\hqrop.py", line 18, in <module> import hqueue as hq File "C:\Program Files\Side Effects Software\Houdini 21.0.440/houdini/python3.11libs\hqueue\__init__.py", line 2, in <module> from . import job File "C:\Program Files\Side Effects Software\Houdini 21.0.440/houdini/python3.11libs\hqueue\job.py", line 3, in <module> import lxml.etree as ET ImportError: DLL load failed while importing etree: The specified module could not be found.
I've tried to put env variables with Houdini Python and Houdini instalation. But no luck. Job diagnostic information shows clearly that paths to access Python and Houdini installation are all correct. So I assume there must be a problem in the python itself.
I'm wondering if it's related to this bug fix. I wasn't able to try because every daily build available instantly crashes on my machine:
Thank you.