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SideFX Labs - Houdini 20.5

SideFX Labs is a free, open-source toolset geared towards assisting Houdini users with a variety of tasks commonly used for digital content creation. It is an all-inclusive toolset that spans the shelf, digital assets, custom desktops and scripts and more. The toolset is currently maintained by Mai Ao, Danicka Oglesby, Christos Stavridis, Mohamad Salame, and Bailey Hogan. It also receives a lot of contributions from the always active Houdini community. The toolset originated from the GameDevelopmentToolset, which was rebranded in the Houdini 18.0 release.

Roadmap & Changelog

Please visit our Public Roadmap to see what we are working on, vote on features, and submit new ideas. For more detailed updates in chronological order, please visit our Changelog. Unlike the raw commit history, this log is curated and updated once every production release.

Installation

The following instructions are based on the Windows OS. Please adapt them accordingly to your OS.

Method 1 (Personal): Houdini Launcher

Open Houdini Launcher and navigate to the Labs/Packages section to install a version of SideFX Labs.

The SideFX Labs package will be installed to C:\Program Files\Side Effects Software\sidefx_packages.

Please note that if you have (perhaps accidentally) installed multiple copies of the same version of SideFX Labs (e.g. SideFXLabs20.5), the copy located in sidefx_packages will typically take precedence.

Method 2 (Deployment): Command Line

You can also install the SideFX Labs package through command line, for example, using Command Prompt or Houdini Command Line Tools (C:\Program Files\Side Effects Software\Houdini 20.5.100\bin\hcmd.exe). This is especially useful for deployment in a studio environment.

To install the latest production build, the latest daily build, or to uninstall (listed in this order), the commands are:

"C:\Program Files\Side Effects Software\Launcher\bin\houdini_installer.exe" install-package --package-name "SideFX Labs 20.5 Production Build" --installdir "D:\studio\sidefxlabs"

"C:\Program Files\Side Effects Software\Launcher\bin\houdini_installer.exe" install-package --package-name "SideFX Labs 20.5 Daily Build" --installdir "D:\studio\sidefxlabs"

"C:\Program Files\Side Effects Software\Launcher\bin\houdini_installer.exe" uninstall-package "D:\studio\sidefxlabs\SideFXLabs20.5.json"

("D:\studio\sidefxlabs" is just an example path.)

To replace part of a hard-coded path with an environment variable, you need to first define the environment variable on the machine that executes the commands.

Press the Windows key to search for Edit environment variables for your account, and then click New... on the Environment Variables window to add a new variable.

Please note that Houdini-specific environment variables, such as HSITE, HOME, etc., are not automatically recognized in Command Prompt or Houdini Command Line Tools when you type in commands. For command line installation purposes, adding environment variables to houdini.env or a Houdini package definition JSON file is not enough. You have to define them in the system.

Once the environment variable is set (e.g. MY_SIDEFXLABS = D:\studio\sidefxlabs), then the commands become:

"C:\Program Files\Side Effects Software\Launcher\bin\houdini_installer.exe" install-package --package-name "SideFX Labs 20.5 Production Build" --installdir "%MY_SIDEFXLABS%"

"C:\Program Files\Side Effects Software\Launcher\bin\houdini_installer.exe" install-package --package-name "SideFX Labs 20.5 Daily Build" --installdir "%MY_SIDEFXLABS%"

"C:\Program Files\Side Effects Software\Launcher\bin\houdini_installer.exe" uninstall-package "%MY_SIDEFXLABS%\SideFXLabs20.5.json"

For more on how to download, install, upgrade, and uninstall Houdini and its components, please visit here.

Method 3 (Specific Versions / Steam Houdini Users): GitHub

Sometimes you may need to access an earlier release or to get the same-day updates before the next day's release is downloadable. In those cases, you can get the package directly from this GitHub repository.

Step 1. [Option A] Download one of the releases from here. Choose a release version/date, expand Assets and select either one of the Source code zip files. This step can be automated with a script that downloads the zip files from either one of the following URLs (replace 20.5.100 with the desired version number).

https://github.com/sideeffects/SideFXLabs/archive/refs/tags/20.5.100.zip
https://github.com/sideeffects/SideFXLabs/archive/refs/tags/20.5.100.tar.gz

Step 1. [Option B] Click on the top-right Code button on the main page of this repository and select Download ZIP. This allows you to get the same-day updates before the next day's release is downloadable.

Step 1. [Option C] (Advanced) Clone this repository into a custom SideFXLabs directory of your choosing. Skip Step 2.

Step 2. If you have downloaded a zipped version of the package in Step 1, unzip it into a custom SideFXLabs directory of your choosing.

Step 3. Go to your custom SideFXLabs directory that now contains the unzipped contents, copy the package definition template file SideFXLabs.json to C:\Users\...\Documents\houdini20.5\packages. Rename the destination copy to SideFXLabs20.5.json. Open this file and replace "$HOUDINI_PACKAGE_PATH/SideFXLabs20.5" (line 8) with the path to your own SideFXLabs directory. When Houdini launches, it relies on this file to discover the location of your SideFX Labs package.

(Step 3 only needs to be done once for every major Houdini X.Y release. To update SideFX Labs for the same Houdini X.Y version, simply delete the existing contents of your custom SideFXLabs directory and unzip the updated package into that folder.)

For more on how to manage Houdini packages, please visit here.

Verification

If SideFX Labs is successfully installed, launch Houdini and you should see a Labs menu on the top-left menu bar.

Additional Information

Live Development

We're actively developing the tools in this repository. The releases provide safe checkpoints in the code for you to download.

Expanded HDAs

All of the HDAs are using the expanded format that was introduced in H16. This allows better diffing of the tools so you can see what our changes are doing and choose to integrate them back into your production.

Example Files

Instead of tying the examples as HDAs, we will be generating separate hip files that show how the tools should work in context. These can be found here.

Data Analytics

SideFX Labs optionally collects data about what tools are used through Google Analytics. We do this in order to focus our resources on the more active tools and therefore be able to help more people. This does not track any personal user data such as IP, Name, License use etc. To opt-out of this tracking, you can disable the "Send Anonymous Usage Statistics" toggle under preferences. Additionally, you can bypass this behavior entirely by setting the environment variable "HOUDINI_ANONYMOUS_STATISTICS = 0".

Other Environment Variables

SideFX Labs has a few other environment variables that can be set to modify the behavior of the toolset and its installation process:

  1. "SIDEFXLABS_NOINSTALL_MESSAGE = Your message here" - Disables the installing of the toolset on the machine, and shows the text stored in the environment variable.
  2. "SIDEFXLABS_ADMIN_UPDATES = 1" - This prevents users from updating the already installed toolset on their machine. Useful for studios where one version of the toolset is enforced.

Contributors

SideFX Labs Team

SideFX Staff

SideFX Interns

Community