add houdini support

[hannesdelbeke]

houdine has a free version, DL from here https://www.sidefx.com/products/houdini-apprentice/
can we use same implementation for full version?

[hannesdelbeke]

• custom menu in main menu bar see https://www.sidefx.com/docs/houdini/basics/config_menus.html, unanswered thread https://discourse.techart.online/t/is-creating-custom-menu-in-houdini-using-python/13991
• custom main menu tutorial using XML https://houdinitricks.tumblr.com/post/132640352254/quicktip-custom-main-menus

other

• QT commands https://www.sidefx.com/docs/houdini/hom/hou/qt/index.html
• custom menu in tool/graph see https://www.artstation.com/blogs/se_carri/zL9L/houdini-scripted-menus-making-your-hdas-menus-dynamic

[zuokangbo]

Does Houdini now support it？

[hannesdelbeke]

not yet.

since you likely are familiar with houdini:
How would you use unimenu with houdini?
And where would you expect the menu to show up?

briefly looked into houdini and it seems to have multiple menu systems.
Or if you have any Python experience feel free to make a PR

[zuokangbo]

@hannesdelbeke The way I know of is to dynamically generate and save the menu configuration file xml in a specified location before starting houdini, no direct way of doing this via python has been found.

[hannesdelbeke]

yes seems like it's XML only.
it'd be possible to support this with unimenu but a lot of work. don't think i have the time for it right now.
https://www.sidefx.com/docs/houdini/basics/config_menus.html

[hannesdelbeke]

also curiouys what this does. https://www.sidefx.com/docs/houdini/hom/hou/pypanel.html

dynamically creating XML and restarting houdini: the maxscript implementiation did something similar i believe
it's still in the codebase i think.
menus stayed between sessioins before i swapped to QT