Better Houdini Tools

A collection of tools to set default preferences automatically and make Houdini more usable and stable.

Latest release v0.3.1

Copy Code Install Manually

Default Preferences

  • Disable Nodes Shapes
  • Use Simple Node Shapes
  • Disable Auto Move Nodes
  • Disable Nodes Animations
  • Set Low Size to Show Ring
  • Show Displayed Node instead of Selected Node
  • Create Tools In Context
  • Set UI to Compact Mode
  • Startup with a specific Desktop

On Scene Open

  • Apply the default Desktop
  • Set Cooking mode to Manual
  • Set view to “Hide other objects” Not possible yet
  • Set view to “Show Display Operator” Not possible yet

This will make loading the scenes faster and more stable.

Propagate display flag to children

Each time you connect a node to one with a display flag, the flag is transferred to the new one

Create object merge from clipboard

Alt+V

Create an Object merge with references to all copied nodes

Easily Create Nulls

Alt+Click

Automatically create Nulls with correct names for all selected nodes

Connect nodes by height position

Shift+Y

All selected nodes will be connected in the order of their height

Improved Cycle Display

R

Cycle display flag between all selected nodes. Continue working even after deselecting them

Create Node Previews

M

Put a preview of the node like TouchDesigner.
Very slow and experimental

Change Viewport Color

Add a shortcut to switch the background color of viewports

Changelogs

v0.3.1
  • Add Houdini 20.5/python 3.11 support
  • Add an auto-installer of the tool and auto-updater in the shelf
  • Improve startup of Houdini with a better management of default desktops
  • Disable "on open hide other objects" at scene open because it's not yet implemented
v0.3
  • Add Houdini 20/python 3.10 support
  • Fix the tool to open images sequences with mplay from the file explorer.
  • Fix bug preventing opening image sequences with spaces in their names
  • Polish some UI in the SetupLoader() tool for an alternate method of loading setups that are not HDA
v0.2
  • Added python 3.7 support
  • Add a tool to open image sequence with mplay directly from the file explorer
  • Fix a bug with namespaces in submodule of pythonlib.
  • It prevented the drag and drop of some files/nodes in the network view
  • Removed the keymap file that overrides 2 keyboard shortcuts