A procedural asset library for SideFX Houdini

qLib is a procedural digital asset library for SideFX's Houdini. In the right hands it can speed up the production process dramatically by letting the artist spend more time on what she wants to achieve instead of how she wants to achieve it. We call it procedural because it is a collection of simple tools designed to work flawlessly with each other and Houdini's native toolset.

qLib is open source software licensed under the New BSD license. It's developed by VFX professionals from several studios working on feature films, game cinematics and commercials.

The installation process involves two steps: getting the contents and setting up the environment for Houdini.

There are two ways to get the contents of the library. You can download a compressed archive file or you can clone the official repository with Git. While installing from an archive may be a bit simpler, we highly recommend you to use Git since it gives you the additional benefits of instant updates and easy access to older versions and development branches.

Simply download the current version by pressing one of the download buttons and unpack it to the place where you want to install qLib.

In order to use Git, you first have to install it. Every modern Linux distribution has a Git package. Use your choice of package manager to install it. On Windows download and install Git on Windows, on OS X do the same with git-osx-installer.

After installing Git, open a terminal and clone the repository. On Windows use git bash which is a pretty decent shell included in Git on Windows. Go to the directory where you want to install qLib and run git clone with the url of the repository.

$ cd PLACE/TO/INSTALL
$ git clone https://github.com/qLab/qLib.git

Later if you want to update the library just go into your cloned repository and run git pull.

$ cd qLib
$ git pull

To finish the installation you must tell Houdini to load the assets by setting the HOUDINI_OTLSCAN_PATH environment variable. You can skip or postpone this step if you want to try out individual assets by loading them manually.

The easiest way to do this is to put the following lines into your houdini.env file:

QLIB=PLACE/TO/INSTALL
QL_OTLS=$QLIB/otls
HOUDINI_OTLSCAN_PATH=@/otls:$QL_OTLS/base:$QL_OTLS/spec:$QL_OTLS/future

Note that on Windows you should use semicolons instead of colons as path separator, so the last line on Windows should look like this:

HOUDINI_OTLSCAN_PATH=@/otls;$QL_OTLS/base;$QL_OTLS/spec;$QL_OTLS/future

qLib comes with fairly extensive documentation. First and foremost every asset should have a help card describing the asset's functionality and behavior.

Other aspects of the library are covered in the Wiki.

If you think you ran into a bug, please report it on the project's issue tracker. RFEs are also welcome there!

If you need help, have a question or just want to keep up with the news regarding qLib, feel free to join us on our Google Groups page.