Houdini – LMB Hotkeys Like Unreal

When you have worked a little bit with Unreal, you may have found very efficient the hotkeys to drop nodes in the material editor.

• Just hold the click on the left mouse button (LMB),
• type a letter,
• release the LMB

A new node appears!

After coming back on Houdini after this experience I found really frustrating that I have to type all the name of the node I want…

I have searched to do it in Houdini but it seems that there is no easy way to put hotkeys with the LMB directly in the software.

I have created a script with Autohotkey to recreate this functionality in Houdini.

Autohotkey

Why this program?

This program launch scripts that can reproduce keys/mouse movements like if you were doing it on your computer and add hotkeys to them.

For example to add a Node Merge in Houdini, you have to:

• push the tab key
• type ‘m’ ‘e’ ‘r’ ‘g’ ‘e’
• push the enter key
• click to drop the node at the current cursor’s position

With this program you can create a shortcut that will execute for you all the steps above.

In this case I decided to keep the Unreal way to drop nodes, while you’re holding the left button, type the letter m for Merge to perform the hotkey and it will drop the node at the cursor’s position.

~LButton & M::
	KeyWait LButton, M
	Send, {Tab}
	Sleep 50
	Send, merge
	Send, {enter}
	Sleep 125
	Click
return

Install the software

To install Autohotkey or AHK on your computer download it from the official website https://www.autohotkey.com/

I am using version 1.1.x

Hotkeys keymap

I will continue to improve the list with time and I need to follow which keys are already used and what they are doing.

I have created a keyboard map to visualise this better.

Get the latest version of my script

You can see my script on github:

Launch the script

To launch the script, just double-click Houdini_Hotkeys.ahk.

An icon    will appear on your taskbar close to the clock.

If you right click on that icon you:

• can pause the script ,
• edit it,
• reload it,
• quit the program