Houdini variables

[PhasmaCeritus]

Hi,

I have an issue with my $HIP variable being local. I am rendering on the render farm and I wish there was a way to tell houdini to set up $HIP as a network path.

I have tried setting HIP manually in Edit -> Aliases and Variables but of course it's being overwritten with a local path after saving the scene file.

So I was wondering

1. is there a way to set $HIP manually and force it not to update after saving the scene?

2. can I make Houdini to set up $HIP as a network path?

I could create a new custom variable and assign my network path to it. but it would be a torture for me to go through my scene and update every single path that has $HIP in it.

3. is there a way to automatically change all the scene paths that contains $HIP? Maybe a python script that iterates through all the paths changing HIP in to something else..?

Anyway, let me know if you have an idea how could I approach my problem

Thanks

[Marc]

I could be mistaken since I haven't used it in a while, but I have a feeling you should/would be better off using $JOB instead of $HIP.

[PhasmaCeritus]

I could be mistaken since I haven't used it in a while, but I have a feeling you should/would be better off using $JOB instead of $HIP.

Oh, that would have been great if I knew this from the beginning of my project, but now I have to go and change every $HIP to $JOB manually. I wish I would not have to do this...

Is there a way around it?

[malexander]

Is there a way around it?

Indeed there is:

opchange -p / \$HIP \$JOB

Save a copy first, just in case

[PhasmaCeritus]

Indeed there is:

opchange -p / \$HIP \$JOB

Save a copy first, just in case

Amazing...

Thanks a lot

problem solved

[hopbin9]

I think $HIP is the correct variable for rendering on a farm. That is what I use without any trouble.

If I place my project file here.

//machinename/folder/project.hip

And I have a shared resource here

//machinename/folder/textures/map.png

then the path should be

$HIP/textures/map.png

Work's just fine on the render farm, as long as each node can access //machinename

You can not do this with $HIP, at least the last time I tried it failed on the farm.

$HIP/../someparentfolder/map.png

p.s. That's on Windows, but the process is the same on Linux.

[Marc]

$HIP changes though depending on where you opened your file from. So it could work on your farm, but perhaps not somebody elses ... depends on how it's all setup. $JOB doesn't change unless you tell it to, so it's more reliable as a path.

M

[PhasmaCeritus]

thanks guys

$JOB and the little scripty script is what I needed so it's working now

[hopbin9]

$HIP changes though depending on where you opened your file from. So it could work on your farm, but perhaps not somebody elses ... depends on how it's all setup. $JOB doesn't change unless you tell it to, so it's more reliable as a path.

M

ah.. ok. So my farm is setting the hip file's location as the current working folder, and on his farm it's opening it from a different folder.

i get now. thanks.