Houdini Connector Plugin Installation

This guide is applicable for both Windows and macOS, depending on what version of Houdini and OS you have, your UI may be different, but the process is the same.

• Video Guide

• Step by Step Instructions

1) Download the Houdini Connector plugin from here.

2) Extract the downloaded "GreyscalegorillaStudioConnectors.zip" file.

3) Depending on your OS, navigate into the extracted folder > "GreyscalegorillaHoudiniConnect_Win" or "GreyscalegorillaHoudiniConnect_macOS"

and copy these two files:

GreyscalegorillaHoudiniConnect folder and GreyscalegorillaHoudiniConnect.json

4) On Windows, open up an explorer window and go to your Documents folder (this should be your User > Document folder) Inside the Documents folder you should see a Houdini folder for each version of Houdini that you have installed. i.e. houdini20.0

Inside that folder look for "packages" folder. If one doesn't exist then please create it.

5) Paste into: "C:\Users\YourUser\Documents\houdini20.0\packages" folder.

Now open up the GreyscalegorillaHoudiniConnect.json file in a text editor.

You can do this by right clicking on the file and choosing "Open With->Notepad".

Edit the path of the GreyscalegorillaHoudiniConnect to point to the full file path location.

Make sure to change the "YourUser" to the name of your account on your machine.

i.e. if your account name is Jake, and you are using Houdini20.0, it would look like the following (see below). Once edited make sure to Save the file and close the editor.

{
	"enable" : true,
	"env":
	[
		{"GreyscalegorillaHoudiniConnect": "C:/Users/Jake/Documents/Houdini20.0/packages/GreyscalegorillaHoudiniConnect"},
		
		{"HOUDINI_PYTHONWARNINGS": "ignore"}
	],
	"path": "$GreyscalegorillaHoudiniConnect"
	
}

6) After launching Houdini, launch Greyscalegorilla Studio App and select Houdini as 3D Application and select the renderer from settings then go back and click Connect button.

7) Connect button color will change to green color and show it is connected to Houdini. Now you can use the assets from GSG Studio App.

Installing files on macOS

On the Mac, using the Finder, open up your Harddrive and navigate to the following location.

"/Users/YourUser/Library/Preferences/houdini/19.5"

Side note: If you don't see the Library folder it may be because it is hidden on your machine. To show the hidden folders you can do the following from within your account folder.

1. Press Command + Shift + . (the period key). This will show hidden files in the folder.
2. To hide the files again, press Command + Shift + . again.

Once you are in the correct folder (i.e. houdini/19.5), look for a packages folder. If one does not exist then please create it.

Copy the extracted contents of the zip file to the packages folder.

• Copy GreyscalegorillaHoudinConnect to:
  • "~/Library/Preferences/houdini/19.5/packages/GreyscalegorillaHoudiniConnect"
• Copy GreyscalegorillaHoudiniConnect.json to:
  • "~/Library/Preferences/houdini/19.5/packages/GreyscalegorillaHoudiniConnect.json"

By default the json file is set for Houdini 19.5. If you have a different version of Houdini installed then you will need to edit the GreyscalegorillaHoudiniConnect.json file and change the version number from 19.5 to whatever version of Houdini that you may have.

{
	"enable" : true,
	"env":
	[
		{"GreyscalegorillaHoudiniConnect": "~/Library/Preferences/houdini/19.5/packages/GreyscalegorillaHoudiniConnect"},
		
		{"HOUDINI_PYTHONWARNINGS": "ignore"}
	],
		"path": "$GreyscalegorillaHoudiniConnect"
	
}

Materials will be imported into Network Editor > Material Context.

/mat

Now you can select the imported GSG material to assign to any object in your scene and render.

Redshift Renderer Installation for Houdini

• For your convenience we are sharing Redshift ".json" config file below. (for Windows & macOS)
• Please check the official instructions from Maxon for more information.

{
  "env": [
    { "REDSHIFT_ROOT": [
      {"houdini_os != 'windows'" : "/Applications/redshift" },
      {"houdini_os == 'windows'" : "C:/ProgramData/redshift" }
      ]
    },
    { "HOUDINI_PATH": [
      {"houdini_os != 'windows'" : "${REDSHIFT_ROOT}/redshift4houdini/${HOUDINI_VERSION}_arm64" },
      {"houdini_os == 'windows'" : "${REDSHIFT_ROOT}/Plugins/Houdini/${HOUDINI_VERSION}" }
      ]
    },
    { "PXR_PLUGINPATH_NAME": [
      {"houdini_os != 'windows'" : "${REDSHIFT_ROOT}/redshift4solaris/${HOUDINI_VERSION}_arm64" },
      {"houdini_os == 'windows'" : "${REDSHIFT_ROOT}/Plugins/Solaris/${HOUDINI_VERSION}" }
      ]
    },
    { "PATH": "${REDSHIFT_ROOT}/bin" },
    { "REDSHIFT_AUTOSPAREPARAMS" : "1"},
    { "REDSHIFT_RV_ALWAYSONTOP"  : "0"},
    { "REDSHIFT_RV_OPEN_ONLY"    : "1"}
  ]
}

Updating the Connector Plugin

When a new update for the Connector is released you will first need to remove the existing

"GreyscalegorillaHoudiniConnect" folder from the installation path. (keep the .json file)

After removing the previous version you can now follow the Installation steps again to install the new one. (just copy the "GreyscalegorillaHoudiniConnect" folder this time)

Then you can run Houdini and use the new connector immediately.

Disable Houdini Console Log Messages

You can add environment variable to set the console logging level.

Copy the code below and paste it to your "houdini.env" file using a text editor.

Sample paths where you can find your "houdini.env" file.

"C:\Users\YourUser\Documents\houdini19.5" (Windows)

"~/Library/Preferences/houdini/19.5/packages/" (macOS)

Set the option you prefer and save your file. Relaunch Houdini.

# -----------------------------------------
GREYSCALEGORILLA_HOUDINI_LOG_LEVEL= 1

# 0: no message
# 1: errors
# 2: info + errors (DEFAULT)
# 3: debug + info + errors

# -----------------------------------------