Upgrading

Upgrading has two parts: installing the new version, and opening your older scenes in it.

Install the new version

Natsura > Check for Updates shows your installed version and the latest one, with an Open Downloads button. Download the new version for the same Houdini licence as before, unzip it into a new folder, and run its setup, as in Installation. Don't unzip it over the old one.

With the launcher, setup leaves a new shortcut named for the new version. The old shortcut still opens the old version, so you can keep both and remove the old folder when you no longer need it.

With a package install, choose Package install (or Both) again in the new setup. It rewrites Natsura.json in the packages folder of the Houdini version you pick, so that Houdini loads the new version from then on. A package for another Houdini version still points at the old folder until you run setup for it too. If you wrote the package file by hand, change its paths to the new folder (see Package Install).

Your settings, licence and the Project Browser's list of projects live in your Natsura user folder, not in the install, so they carry over. Your scene files stay wherever you saved them.

Open older scenes

Scenes from older versions upgrade when they open, and the console lists what changed. Each node is upgraded once and remembers its version. To run the upgrade again on demand, for example on a scene that was already open or one you merged in, use Natsura > Upgrade > Upgrade Scene, or Upgrade Selected Node(s).

Some things to know:

• Scenes made before 0.6.1 open with Simulate's Random set to 1 (legacy), so their trees branch as they did. Everything since uses 2.
• Grow nodes from before Grow 2.0 are switched to Grow 2.0. A few old controls have no equivalent; if you had changed them, a notice lists each node and the values it dropped so you can set them again.
• Simulate has had one output since 0.7.2. Nodes that read its old second (rig) output get an Assembly Unpack put in front of them.
• A Natsura node you unlocked with Allow Editing of Contents keeps its old contents and is not upgraded, and the console says so. Right-click it and choose Match Current Definition to pick up the new version, which discards your edits inside it, then check its settings.
• A node inside a locked asset of your own is not upgraded either. Upgrade that asset's definition.
• Open and save older scenes in Houdini before sending them to a render farm or other batch job.

Scenes from 0.5 and 0.6

When a 0.5 or 0.6 scene has older settings to migrate, the Upgrade Scene dialog opens after the scene loads:

• Fix All replaces every old gravity and ancestor row on your Grow nodes with effector nodes.
• Update one by one asks about each row.
• Don't fix leaves them as they are.

Its options are on by default. Save pre-upgrade backup of the hipfile copies the saved file to <name>_<old version>_backup.hip next to it. Remove spare parms on grow nodes clears leftovers from older versions; untick it if you promoted parameters onto a Grow yourself. Strip stale revertToDefaults channel keyframes removes defaults that older upgrades stored as keyframes.

The dialog's choices can't be undone with Undo, so keep a saved copy if you want to start over.

Status

We are working on old scenes back to 0.5 opening cleanly. If one doesn't, send it to us through Support.