Make paths relative (shift, alt P) not working in bootcamp

hi,
i’m fairly new to vvvv and i am trying to save my patches so I can move them across to other computers - i went through the making patches portable tutorial, but when i try to make the paths relative for external modules and shaders it doesn’t seem to do anything and the paths remain set to the old folder … is there another way to perform this operation other than the shift+alt+p method ?

cheers

helo 5k,

there might be a missunderstanding here. i’d say the shift-alt-p method is no longer really needed. whenever you save a patch all its child-patches are being saved relatively automatically (if possible).

modules and shaders…if they are standards or coming with the addonpack there shouldn’t be a need to make them relative as they should be available on the targetsystem anyway. if they are your own modules/effects you should have them referenced from subdirectories of your project directory already.

so maybe you could describe your actual problem a bit more in detail. it would probably help if you could illustrate what you say here: “it doesn’t seem to do anything and the paths remain set to the old folder”

Hi Joreg,
thanks for your reply - I’ve followed your advice and am able to make subpatches etc portable - however when using shaders i come across the following problem. When I wish to save a shader into my project directory I right click the shader to see the shader code, but then cannot use CTRL/SHIFT/S or the center mouse button to save the shader relatively into my project folder. I have tried copying the shader FX file manually into the project shader subfolder, but when opening this on another computer the link is broken. any ideas? thanks again for your help

yes, ctrl+shift+s is not yet implemented. but just to make sure we have the same understanding of the typical workflow:

  • if you’re using one of the effects that ship with vvvv as is there is no need to save that effect locally to your project. just create the effect node, save the patch. opening that patch on another PC with the same betaXY of vvvv installed will have access to that exact same effect, right?

  • if you want to modify one of the existing effects you should clone from it and by doing so save it to your local directory. cloning any of the effects can be achieved by pressing ctrl+enter or ctrl+click on the desired effect in the nodebrowser. that will ask you for a new name and location to save to (which will default to your active patches directory + /effects).

  • same if you want to start a new effect simply clone the Template (EX9.Effect) and save it locally as will be the default during the clone operation.

  • lastly if you have a custom effect from somewhere else put it in your local patch directory + \effects, like:
    \patches*.v4p
    \patches\effects\custom.fx
    and then in any of your patches the custom.fx should simply show up in the nodebrowser for you to create.

hope that helps.

I’m having a similar problem, although not in bootcamp - i’ve been using the blend.fx in a lot of patches, and recently just discovered that most of the patches are referencing the blend.fx stored in one of the subfolders of an old patch. I’m not too worried about the old patches, but in a new one im working on, i’ve just copied the effect into the fx folder of the new version of vvvv (i’ve only just updated), but its not showing up in the node list of vvvv. If i copy the blend from an old patch, then it works, and also now shows up in the node list, but its reference in the .fx file in the wrong place.
How can I change the path of the node thats already in the patch? and maybe more importantly, any ideas why the .fx node in the fx folder of 4V isn’t showing up in the node list, until i directly copy the node in from another patch where it’s referenced in another location?

Thanks very much

To move effects that are already in your patch, you can clone them from the node list (control click), and they get copied to your effects folder in your patch directory.
Why it doesn’t appear in you fx folder, I don’t know!

helo alex,

not sure why it doesn’t show up, but anyway it is no longer recommended to put custom effects in vvvvs \effects directory. please read nodes and paths for details.

as mentioned there you should put stuff which is not shipping with vvvv or the addonpack to a custom \contributions directory which you specify in your root. or as cat mentioned above in your project_directory\effects.

if everything goes well then vvvv should find effects there even if loading older patches.