TECHNICAL PAPER Building Tools for Houdini 9

Exercise 4: Add Digital Asset to the Shelf and TAB menus1.2.3.Note:Install the Digital Asset to your hip file that you’d like to add to the shelf. For the sake of this exerciselet’s assume you have an asset named object_test.As for Exercise 3, select your asset in the Tools list and Accept.Select your tool from the shelf and observe what happens.If there is no current selection no nodes will be place in any networks.4. RMB on Test to Edit Tool… and Edit with an HDA Editor5.6.7.Because this is an asset you will not be modifying the shelf file, but will instead be modifying theasset itself.Go to the Tools Folder and notice a number of things:○○ The Name and Label have been filled in automatically based on the asset type.○○ The Script imports the appropriate utils module, also based on the asset type and calls thegenericTool function.○○ The Context uses the local variables $HDA_TABLE and $HDA_NAME to make an informedguess as to which contexts you’d like this to work in.○○ The TAB Submenu Path initializes with a Digital Assets entry.You could at this point add some additional Python scripting to prompt the user or give other feedback.You could also add Help that would be visible in the Shelf. We go into more detail on how todo this in the next section.Cancel out of the Op Type Properties Editor.Exercise 5: Add Tool by Editing .shelf File1.2.Exit from Houdini.Open $HOME/houdini9.0/toolbars/test.shelf with your favorite text editor (preferably one withindentation and syntax color coding).3.4.5.6.Figure 11 - .shelf file exampleTo add an existing Houdini Tool to this shelf you just need to insert a new memberTool in the block between lines 8 and 12.To add a Digital Asset do as for an existing Houdini tool, but remember the asset must be in the pathor it will show as Undefined when you open your hip file.To add a new button-push script tool add the memberTool name and then define the script itself in a section similar to the “hello_world” exampleSave the new shelf file and open Houdini to see the results.12 | TECHNICAL PAPER Rev 1.0