Houdini with Renderpal

[borisb2]

Hi.

I'm trying to setup Renderpal with Houdini. Unfortunately I didn't found any tutorial or help about setting up executables or renderers in the render management window in Renderpal.

Do I really have to create an ifd-file for every scene (.hip-file) that I want to render? The Houdini-help is mentioning that you also can directly render .hip-files from command-line using "hrender". But on Windows you have to use something like cygwin-environment (Unix).

Has anybody used Renderpal with Houdini?

I managed to output the ifd-file from the mantra-node in Houdini. But only the last frame from the sequence was rendered. Of course I could output now one ifd-file for every frame and import that in RenderPal but that can't be the idea????

maybe I should start in getting a propper ifd-file and render that from command-line as a test?

Thanks for any help.

Edited October 11, 2010 by borisb2

[pclaes]

Normally one frame per ifd. One command triggers the render of one frame using the ifd file for that frame. I know with rib files you can render multiple frames in one rib, but not sure if you can do that with ifd. It wouldn't be that efficient I think, as all that geometry would have to be written per frame in that one file. I would get bloated quickly unless you are using procedurals to render.

[borisb2]

Normally one frame per ifd. One command triggers the render of one frame using the ifd file for that frame. I know with rib files you can render multiple frames in one rib, but not sure if you can do that with ifd. It wouldn't be that efficient I think, as all that geometry would have to be written per frame in that one file. I would get bloated quickly unless you are using procedurals to render.

hmm .. but there must be a way to render a sequence with Renderpal?

Thanks anyway

[pclaes]

Well, you could make the command yourself.

like a little for loop in shell or python. I don't know what renderpal accepts.

Have a look here:

http://www.sidefx.com/index.php?option=com_forum&Itemid=172&page=viewtopic&t=11494

or this one:

http://www.sidefx.com/index.php?option=com_forum&Itemid=172&page=viewtopic&t=13191&highlight=hrender

in shell:

http://www.sidefx.com/index.php?option=com_forum&Itemid=172&page=viewtopic&t=14151&highlight=hrender

more:

http://www.sidefx.com/index.php?option=com_forum&Itemid=172&page=viewtopic&t=16761

I guess you are on windows, I have only used it with ifds personally, but I would think this is what you need:

hrender -e -f 4 39 -v -d your_ROP c:/path_to_your_file/file_with_no_spaces_in_name.hip

You'll need to execute that in the shell that comes with houdini (a cshell with houdini environment set up).

[jasoncartiver]

Hi!

This is great!

But what does -v and -d mean?

you put -d your_ROP. So basically, your_ROP means the name of your mantra render node?

And then next is the path to the Houdini file that needs to be rendered. So how can I put in the image output path?

Thank you!

Jason