Render on idle

[AntoineSfx]

While working on something in Houdini, how can I have start rendering another file as soon as the as the machine is idle ?

[lukeiamyourfather]

More context is needed to give meaningful feedback. Is there a render farm that this machine is part of? Is it just a one off machine?

[AntoineSfx]

This is a minimal setup. One workstation, used to both create the hip files, and render them. I'm trying to have it render as soon as it's idle.  Indie license.

 

[lukeiamyourfather]

When you say render as soon as it's idle do you mean you want it to render one job after another in a queue? Or like when you walk away from the machine it should work on a job in a queue?

[AntoineSfx]

9 minutes ago, lukeiamyourfather said:

When you say render as soon as it's idle do you mean you want it to render one job after another in a queue? Or like when you walk away from the machine it should work on a job in a queue?

What I would like, is that when I walk away, I would like my workstation to work on the rendering of whatever is in the render queue.

Note that I may have an instance of H running on the same (only really...) host, because it's the only one I have right now.

[lukeiamyourfather]

HQueue has a feature where it can use clients only when they are idle. You could setup the one workstation as both an HQueue server and client. Submit jobs through HQueue and treat it like a render farm (with only one machine). Other queue managers like Deadline have this idle client detection feature as well.