This tutorial shows you how to pack V-Ray materials and textures as HDAs.
Overview
Houdini Digital Assets (HDA) are reusable custom nodes with their own user interfaces that are packaged in a single node/network. HDAs can be installed at any time and used just like any other part of Houdini. Digital assets are stored in a digital asset library file, with an .hda extension.
When packaging V-Ray materials/textures as HDAs, V-Ray Material Builder filters and shows only the supported digital assets. This is possible, only after you set environment variables.
There are two types of environment variables:
- by category/menu name
- by prefix, e.g. the name of the author
Category/Menu Name Environment Variable
Add VFH_HDA_MENU_PREFIX environment variable and set a value for it through houdini.env or System Environment Variables.
In Houdini, proceed to create a digital asset from Digital Asset > Create New.
Set the Menu Entry in the New Digital Asset dialog. In this case, set it to myCustomMenu. Then click Create.
Note that top level menu names can be separated with";". For example: "category1;category2;category3".
Set your preferences in the Edit Operator Type Properties and save them.
Your HDA is available through the myCustomMenu now.
Prefix Environment Variable
Add VFH_HDA_PREFIX environment variable and set a value for it through houdini.env or System Environment Variables.
In Houdini, proceed to create the digital asset from Digital Asset > Create New.
Set the Author in the New Digital Asset dialog. For the purposes of this tutorial, use TestUser. Then click Create.
Note that top level menu name can be separated with";". For example: "author1;author2;author3".
Set your preferences in the Edit Operator Type Properties and save them.
Your HDA is available through the Digital Asset menu now.
