Create a "Nothing Null"

We will create a null sop with the display and render Flag on. This is quite useful when the Viewport display is quite heavy.

• This tutorial require that you know how to create a shelf tool and be able to call it from the Tab Menu. If you don't, please have a quick look at create a shelf tool post

# get the current pane with kwargs
# kwargs are automatically passed through when executing a script with the tab menu

pane = kwargs['pane']

# getting the current parent Node
# this is the node we are currently Cd in
currentParent = pane.pwd()

# request the user to select a position in the network Pane
pos = pane.selectPosition()

# create the node
null = currentParent.createNode('null')

# rename the node, second argument allows to append a number after the name
# if it already exist
null.setName('Nothing', True)
null.setPosition(pos)

# We customize the node's color and shape
# so we can recognize it easily
null.setColor( hou.Color((0.075, 0.3, 0.075)) )
null.setUserData('nodeshape', 'burst')

# We assign the displayFlag and renderFlag
null.setDisplayFlag(True)
null.setRenderFlag(True)

You can definitely remove the last line if you wish. If you don't want to loose your render object