Configuring Houdini with HSITE with AYON

General
1

Hi everyone,

Does anyone has set up Houdini HSITE through Ayon? The env variable is picked up by Houdini however the tools and scripts aren’t. Is there an order to add the environmental?

Before Ayon we just set the HSITE variable to a folder on the server. That way our custom HDA’s and scripts like 123.py and 456.py were picked up.

Thanks in advance!

Ralph

2

Just cross-referencing: Originally came up on Ynput discord here

In AYON we use the HOUDINI_PATH enviroment variable to configure the houdini setup here.

Other than that, we basically do nothing custom. However, HSITE and HOUDINI_PATH are somewhat related so likely the issue is somewhere there, see e.g. the Houdini docs: Environment variables

Aside of that we use pythonrc.py files for startup scripts because they work in both Houdini Core, Houdini FX (and even the other license types). Otherwise you’d need 123.py, 456.py for Houdini FX, and houdinicore.py for Houdini core (I believe?). And I’m not sure whether multiple 123.py files ever worked - according to this pythonrc.py would also be the way to go.

The question is: what fails with your custom HDAs and everything?
It may also be worth sharing some more details about where you are configuring HSITE currently in AYON and with what values. It may be that it helps to identify where that may affect things too (and potentially can give us an easier reproducable example)

It could be that HOUDINI_PATH overrides how HSITE behaves.

Additional context

3

Currently, you can add environment variable

  • globally across the studio
  • per application
  • per application variant (version)
  • per project and folder path (using tool settings)

For more info: What does AYON offer to customize the application environments?

But, we don’t support environment variables per user (based on login) or per site id (based on machine).

4

Hey guys,

Thanks for the reply. I think I have to dive into it further. So from Ayon 123.py and 456.py aren’t set? Because you can only use one. It will pick up the first it will find. If it does set it we probably have to set it up in a different way. We don’t set the environmental on a per user basis.

It also might be my knowledge of Ayon so far. I’ll dive into it a bit further and will let you know if I have more succes…

Cheers,

Ralph

5

Correct - we provide no 123.py and 456.py but instead use the pythonrc.py files. Like for example here: ayon-houdini/client/ayon_houdini/startup/python3.11libs at c8c7efad9c6fce7b8acea31a6edb1943c8672b34 · ynput/ayon-houdini · GitHub

6

Just to give a bit of an update. It is actually picking up HSITE. I was confused by the otls not loading. Apparently we were doing different things in our current pipeline to load them. Thanks for the help anyways!