using houdini engine to simulate on the farm

[xs2222]

Hello Folks,

 

We are trying to use houdini engine to simulate , cache geo on the farm, but when i do command line to test

 

hbatch abc.hip file , errors out saying hbatch command not found ?

 

any suggestion , explanation to cache on the farm ?

 

 

[goldleaf]

It sounds like Houdini's environment isn't getting sourced properly. An individual user, or a pipeline tool that sets up an environment, would do something this to get hbatch in the $PATH: 

cd /opt/hfs14.0.291;cd source houdini_setup;cd -

Does that make sense? I take it you're using a different farm setup? When setting up Hqueue, it creates a user hquser, which seems to setup the environment properly.

[xs2222]

Hey ,

 

thanks mate , sure got the path setup right , but i need some explanation on how to go about

lauch a sim or a cache on the farm , we use alfansy render manage which is free and so far we were able to

use it to render on the farm , all that is good,

 

since we have got houdini engine licence , would like to use that to sim / cahe on the fram ,

 

is it ,

hbatch  hipfile to simulate on the farm ?

 

 

[goldleaf]

Ah, I see. So here are a couple of options:

 

hbatch

hbatch -R /path/to/hipfile.hip -c render /path/to/rop

The -R flag makes sure to use a non-gui license. See the hbatch --help for more info, or the links at the bottom.

 

hython

 

Or, you could use hython, and create a python script to run the job like this ( https://gist.github.com/crydalch/3167162 ):

"""
A simple script to kick off a certain ROP remotely, optionally
with a given framerange.

Usage: hython path/to/script/houBatch.py /path/to/hipfile /hou/path/to/rop

TODO: Add options for multiple ROPs, hperf.
"""
import hou, sys
 
# Load the hip file
hou.hipFile.load(sys.argv[1])
 
# If framerange option, set it
#if sys.argv[3]:
#    hou.parmTuple( "%s/f" %(sys.argv[2]) ).set((sys.argv[3],sys.argv[4],1.0))
 
# Start the render
hou.node(sys.argv[2]).render()
 
# When finished, exit
sys.exit(0)

I really like using hython to run renders, as I can easily create setups that aren't quite as straightforward to use the Wedge ROP and/or Takes. I've used the above as a starter for lots of different scripts, like this one (to benchmark sims): https://gist.github.com/crydalch/3139492

 

Here are a couple of pages that have been helpful for me:

• http://www.sidefx.com/docs/houdini14.0/render/batch
• http://www.sidefx.com/docs/houdini14.0/hom/commandline

Hope that helps!

[xs2222]

Thanks  a bunch glodleaf ! nice one