Houdini Packages enable/disable in OP

[Krishna_Avril]

Hi, I would like to raise a new Feature request in the OP.

We have the Houdini package path set in the env variable, and all the packages are enabled currently. Our loading time of Houdini is 2.5 minutes, which is way longer. During render, it kind of stinks time there too

We don’t use some of the packages in projects, So if OP can add an option to enable or disable packages on a project basis, that would be a great time-saving feature for studios.

It can be another shelf in OP system settings

I see this procedure was implemented in some studios pipeline; there is a possible way that I’m not aware of it in the backend, Please let me know the possibility of integrating it in OP.

[tokestuartjepsen]

This feature could probably look a lot like the explicit plugins loading in Maya:

Maya | openPYPE

Maya: Defining plugins to load on Maya start - OP-4994

[BigRoy]

Or instead define the packages in the tools settings and only enable those for the projects where they are needed?

I suspect whenever a package is on the path that it will always load and that there is no ‘disable load’ functionality so having them not added to the path is the only decent way.

[Krishna_Avril]

We can write enable/disable inside .json file.

Can OP copy packages and store them in a database (or an individual project)? and we can bind the parameter of the OP option that changes the enable/disable in the .json file.

and use a custom ENV variable inside OP that looks for a project-based package folder. This option is a huge time saving in loading times for artists and rendering machines

[BigRoy]

@Krishna_Avril

and use a custom ENV variable inside OP that looks for a project-based package folder.

Look into configuring Tool groups - I’m pretty sure it solves your issue the best way possible.

Each tool could be one of those packages, like a AXIS tool, htoa tool, qlib tool, etc. and it can e.g. just add the path that contains that particular .json package file or whatever.

You’d also get the benefit of specifying a specific htoa arnold version to a specific project

[mustafa_jafar]

I know your issue has already been resolved, however I have provided this comment for others who may be looking for a summary of this post.

To wrap it up,

you were expecting something like Package Manager
where you can add json packages or packages directories (by project)

However, as BigRoy mentioned this is achievable by environment variables and tools configuration (by particular houdini version, by asset, by project)

This method is general! (it can be used with any DCC)

Read More:

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