Feels like a dumb question, but where does one set the path for an individual user’s matchbox nodebin in batch? 2025.0.1. Thanks
Hey Miles,
Long time no see.
Hope you are well brother.
Is the user’s matchbox nodebin in batch the same as the user bin?
e.g.
/home/$USER/flame/batch/pref/user_batch.bin?
Hey mate good to hear from you, Hope you are well. That file doesn’t contain paths, it’s basically a list of nodes that you’ve dragged into your custom bins in batch. We used to be able to set Shader Paths through the interface, per project/user. But that’s gone. sysconfig is global, so if we change it in there everyone gets the same matchbox nodebin. Thanks
I see - it’s clearly about as useful to me as hotkeys used to be - I never used to change them, but now (2025 onwards) things are a bit different.
I see what you mean - hard to determine from the UI for sure.
I’m almost certain that Fred gave a pretty detailed run through on this feature (sysconfig) in one of the kick off videos - maybe it’s worth hunting for the video?
@miles - I think they have you covered:
centralised_components
It appears that you’ll be able to use <user> as a token in the sysconfig file such that each user will path to their own matchbox bin.
There is a specific example, explicitly for this use case:
For example, even though the Settings are set to be read from a shared location, each user could have its own set of Matchbox shaders if the folder structure is appropriately created and the <user> token is added to the path like this:
/opt/Autodesk/presets/<VERSION>/<user>/matchbox/shaders
This sysconfig file and “Centralized Components” starts with flame 2025. So yes - you no longer have the shader paths tab in the setup app.
If you haven’t changed the sysconfig file you should still be getting the matchboxes from the default location:
/opt/Autodesk/presets/2025/matchbox/shaders
As for making it different for each user… I don’t know if this is possible anymore. I’m gonna dig in to that.
@bryanb - the flame 2025 docs give that exact use case as a documented example.
I saw that phil. doesn’t work. for example i put “matchbox”:“/users/<user>/shaders”. no love. Also it’s not very elegant and not really practical if 90% of the users use the default shaders and 10% use their own. I tried putting both lines in there too. still not work’n
@miles - copy that - add your findings to the documentation page so that they know to update the information.
Are you using macOS?
Does users need to be Users?
Is your user name identical to your OS user?
I’ll try it here - I only have linux so my path will be:
/home/<user>/shaders
I’ll let you know.
"matchbox": "/opt/Autodesk/presets/<VERSION>/<user>/matchbox/shaders",
Hmm yea I tried this in the sysconfig and I have some mx shaders in that path where I’ve added my user name, but the batch matchbox bin comes up blank.
Semi-Related question… Anyone know if you can have flame default to a different directory when choosing a matchbox? Even using the sysconfig file for a centralized location, when I go to choose a matchbox it still starts in /opt/Autodesk/presets/2025/matchbox etc.
Bryan, I’m seeing the same problem, if I put a subdirectory in shaders, then any mx in that subdirectory shows up. Nevermind. misunderstood you.
actually Bryan i think you can change that in the flame/cfg/init.cfg. nevermind again lol
FP-03202 Centralised Components - sysonfig.cfg token does not work.
I submitted a bug report.
It looks like the user does not get resolved before reading the sysconfig.cfg.
Shortly after the sysconfig.cfg parameters get initialized, the user home directory is correctly discovered, in my case /home/pman/flame, so it may yet be possible to tokenize the path.
It may just be an order of operations thing?
Thanks Phil.
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phew. I thought I was taking crazy pills
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@philm @bryanb do shaders show up in your matchbox nodebin when sysconfig is set to the default. Mine don’t, not sure if it is because there are subdirectories in the shaders directory. If I change sysconfig to say shaders/EFFECTS they show up in batch.
It works for me when the path ends at ‘shaders’
I’m currently playing around with cleaning up that directory. I deleted all the folders that have duplicates and they still show up for me.