Getting Started

Installing Eddex either on a local network or on the Amazon is straight forward and requires minimal configuration. Eddex integrates with the Dexen UI, and provides an additional Pareto graph. Individual design variants can be downloaded from the server by selecting points in the Pareto graph.

The Eddex UI showing the Pareto graph of a population of designs being evolved.

Eddex also provides a set of nodes for running evolutionary jobs from within Houdini.

The Eddex nodes in Sidefx Houdini.

The following installation procedure has been developed for Sidefx Houdini users on the Windows platform.

Install Dexen

Before starting with Eddex, you will need to install Dexen.

• Installing Dexen

Install Eddex

• Download the zip file from Github
• Unzip the zip folder anywhere on your hard disk.
• Double-click the setup_env.bat file.

Executing the bat file will set various environment variables. Assuming that $EDDEX is the location where you unzipped the folder, and $HFS is the location where Houdini is installed, then you can check that the following paths have been added:

For the Windows PATH environment variable:

• $HFS/bin
• $EDDEX/bin

For the PYTHONPATH environment variable:

• $EDDEX/python_libs

For the HOUDINI_OTLSCAN_PATH environment variable:

• $HLFS/otls
• &

Nodes in SideFX Houdini

Various nodes will now be available in Sidefx Houdini for running evolutionary optimisation jobs. They will be available on the Tab menu, under ‘Eddex’. If Dexen is running, you will be able to execute jobs directly from within Houdini by clicking the ‘Run’ button.

View Dexen Interface

You may also access the Dexen UI through the browser. If you are running Dexen locally, you can access the UI at http://localhost:5000/.

• Register (http://localhost:5000/register) (Any username and password.)
• Login (http://localhost:5000/login)
• Start running jobs.