Jordan Walsh Posted June 13, 2012 Share Posted June 13, 2012 Hi guys, I'm a pretty new Houdini user (coming from Max and Maya) and we are introducing Houdini into our pipeline. I was just curious to know the best way of setting this up as far as how much we can leave on the servers, what needs to stay on the local machines and whats the best way of managing site wide tools/otls/settings etc. I have seen some talk of the $HSITE variable but as im a bit of a noob im not sure to what extent it can be used, or if there are better ways of going about this. We are a mid sized studio working on Windows and have a decent set of general pipeline tools made in pyton and use Deadline for our render farm. Thanks in advance for any help! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zoso060 Posted June 14, 2012 Share Posted June 14, 2012 There are many factors that would be specific to your studio so it's a bit difficult to give a general answer.. however: In terms of management, it's easiest to have everything on a shared server. The more you load (OTL's, scripts, etc...) at startup, the longer Houdini will take to start. There can be a significant hit on your file server at the start of the day. There are the scripts 123.py and 456.py that will be run when Houdini starts (http://www.sidefx.com/docs/houdini12.0/hom/independent). $HOUDINI_PATH can be a listing of folders. Houdini will scan them for sub-folders (http://www.sidefx.com/docs/houdini12.0/assets/install). OTL management with many users can be tricky. I would suggest handling them like you would other studio tools but also have a mechanism to allow artists to easily share OTL's between themselves. I would avoid managing user settings. Users can export their specific settings if they want. Let me know if you want me to elaborate on anything... Cheers! Jesse Hi guys, I'm a pretty new Houdini user (coming from Max and Maya) and we are introducing Houdini into our pipeline. I was just curious to know the best way of setting this up as far as how much we can leave on the servers, what needs to stay on the local machines and whats the best way of managing site wide tools/otls/settings etc. I have seen some talk of the $HSITE variable but as im a bit of a noob im not sure to what extent it can be used, or if there are better ways of going about this. We are a mid sized studio working on Windows and have a decent set of general pipeline tools made in pyton and use Deadline for our render farm. Thanks in advance for any help! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jordan Walsh Posted June 18, 2012 Author Share Posted June 18, 2012 Thanks Jesse, I guess im wondering that if I wanted to run as much as possible from the farm ho would I actually go about that? Do I set the $HOUDINI_PATH to a network location and move the whole Houdini 12.x\houdini directory there? We have a pretty good server setup so im not too worried about the performance hit. More worried about users and the render servers getting the right scripts and OTLs. There are many factors that would be specific to your studio so it's a bit difficult to give a general answer.. however: In terms of management, it's easiest to have everything on a shared server. The more you load (OTL's, scripts, etc...) at startup, the longer Houdini will take to start. There can be a significant hit on your file server at the start of the day. There are the scripts 123.py and 456.py that will be run when Houdini starts (http://www.sidefx.com/docs/houdini12.0/hom/independent). $HOUDINI_PATH can be a listing of folders. Houdini will scan them for sub-folders (http://www.sidefx.com/docs/houdini12.0/assets/install). OTL management with many users can be tricky. I would suggest handling them like you would other studio tools but also have a mechanism to allow artists to easily share OTL's between themselves. I would avoid managing user settings. Users can export their specific settings if they want. Let me know if you want me to elaborate on anything... Cheers! Jesse Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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