---
title: "HDA Environments"
canonical: "https://documentation.chaos.com/space/VRAYHOUDINI/113280392/HDA%20Environments"
format: markdown
---
This tutorial shows you how to pack V-Ray materials and textures as HDAs. Overview Houdini Digital Assets ( HDA ) are reusable custom nodes with their own user interfaces that are packaged in a single node/network. HDAs can be installed at any time and used just like any other part of Houdini. Digital assets are stored in a digital asset library file, with an .hda extension. When packaging V-Ray materials/textures as HDAs, V-Ray Material Builder filters and shows only the supported digital assets. This is possible, only after you set environment variables. There are two types of environment variables: by category/menu name by prefix, e.g. the name of the author Want to follow along but don’t have a license? Category/Menu Name Environment Variable Add  VFH_HDA_MENU_PREFIX  environment variable and set a value for it through  houdini.env  or System Environment Variables. In Houdini, proceed to create a digital asset from  Digital Asset > Create New . Set the  Menu Entry  in the  New Digital Asset  dialog. In this case, set it to  myCustomMenu . Then click  Create . Note that top level menu names can be separated with";". For example: "category1;category2;category3". Set your preferences in the  Edit Operator Type Properties  and save them. Your HDA is available through the  myCustomMenu  now. Prefix Environment Variable Add  VFH_HDA_PREFIX  environment variable and set a value for it through  houdini.env  or System Environment Variables. In Houdini, proceed to create the digital asset from  Digital Asset > Create New . Set the  Author  in the  New Digital Asset  dialog. For the purposes of this tutorial, use  TestUser . Then click  Create . Note that top level menu name can be separated with";". For example: "author1;author2;author3". Set your preferences in the  Edit Operator Type Properties  and save them. Your HDA is available through the  Digital Asset  menu now.