Saving layer settings in the VFB

[chris_elmer]

Is there a way to preserve the layer settings in the VFB? For example I can add a Background layer with a path to an image, but when I close and re-open my scene it is no longer there. I see there is a "Settings Dir." in the VFB Experimental tab, but enabling that doesn't seem to help.

I'm using Houdini 19.5.435 and vray 6.10.09.

Thanks!

[Gosho.Genchev]

Hey chris_elmer ,

Not at the moment. There are some nice changes coming with Houdini 20.5 that would allow for a comprehensive VFB integration in Solaris - at least that's the goal. Until we've managed to tackle that, I'm afraid working with the VFB in Solaris will be tricky, which is why it sits under that "Experimental" tab.

Best regards!

[chris_elmer]

Understood, thanks for the update!

[Gosho.Genchev]

Hey chris_elmer ,

One of our developers saw this thread and messaged me saying he'd actually expect this to work. I did a quick check on my end, and indeed - the background layer is preserved. Could you please double check to make sure you've set the parameters to "Set or Create" - I'd often click "Set if Exists" accidentally and wonder why things don't work as I expect them to
This should create a "hdvray" folder in the same directory as your Houdini .hip file where the V-Ray settings will be cached to disk.

Best regards!

[chris_elmer]

So it does appear to work intermittently. Occasionally, the VFB will pop up in a broken state where the History pane on the left is greyed out, and the Layers on the right are back to defaults. If I restart the vray render the History pane comes back and shows all the images I've saved previously, but the Layer pane does not recover. The json file on disk doesn't have the previous layers recorded like the background image. Is anyone else seeing this?