kunz Customizing the Houdini Interface

Customizing the Houdini Interface

From kunz
Revision as of 03:33, 14 October 2021 by Admin (talk | contribs)

Houdini provides almost limitless customization, it's easy to be overwhelmed at first as there's lots of different places where you change settings.

Outlined below are the steps I take to customize Houdini to my liking.

Get the Slate Theme

For a flat user interface, I'm using this Slate Theme from Odforce I found a while ago. It eliminates a lot of the shading on UI elements like buttons and tabs. I find it easier on the eyes as well as more simplified modern look.

The theme can be downloaded here Slate_Theme_Houdini.zip, unzip the files and put them in your $HOME/houdiniX.x/config/ directory. The next time you launch Houdini, you should see the Slate theme as an option in your Edit > Color Settings Window

Changing the Desktop Layout

Download the .desk file and place it in your local preferences desktop directory $HOME/houdiniX.x/desktop/


Simplifying Node Shapes

https://www.sidefx.com/docs/houdini/network/menus.html#view_menu https://www.sidefx.com/docs/houdini/ref/windows/mainprefs.html#net https://www.sidefx.com/docs/houdini/network/options.html#display


Changing the Splash Screen Image

Some aspects of Houdini can only be customized through Setting Houdini Environment Variables.

You can customize the following Houdini Environment Variables by editing $HOME/houdiniX.x/houdini.env

HOUDINI_SPLASH_FILE = ~/hsplash/hsplash_014.png
HOUDINI_SPLASH_MESSAGE = WELCOME ${USER}@${HOSTNAME}\\nVERSION: ${HOUDINI_VERSION}
HOUDINI_UI_QUEUE_SIZE = 2500000
HOUDINI_NO_START_PAGE_SPLASH = 1
HOUDINI_MAX_FILE_HISTORY = 32
HOUDINI_ENABLE_OLD_PRESETS = 1
HOUDINI_USE_OTL_AS_DEFAULT_HDA_EXT = 1