Installation
Requirements
- Houdini 21.0 or later
- Python 3.10+ (bundled with Houdini)
- Tested on Windows 10 and 11
Steps
1. Download the Release
Unzip the latest CopernicusPainter.zip. You will get a CopernicusPainter/ folder.
2. Register the Package
Copy the included CopernicusPainter.json package file into your Houdini packages folder:
Windows: C:\Users\<you>\Documents\houdini21.0\packages\
Open the .json file and set the COPERNICUS_PATH variable to point to where you extracted CopernicusPainter/:
{
"env": [
{
"COPERNICUS_PATH": "C:/path/to/CopernicusPainter"
}
],
"path": "$COPERNICUS_PATH"
}
3. Restart Houdini
After restarting, two new Python Panel tabs will be available in Houdini:
- Copernicus Painter — the main texture painting tool
- Create Materials — the material creator utility
Open a Python Panel pane and select either from the panel list.
First Launch
On first launch the tool opens on the Project Setup tab. Before starting to paint you need to initialize a project — see Workflow.
Before jumping in, head to Settings to configure your materials, smart materials, and alphas library folders. Copernicus also ships with an example .hiplc file located in CopernicusPainter/houdini_resources/example_scene/ that lets you try creating your first smart materials and smart masks as well as trying Copernicus Painter itself.