Houdini 18.0

HQueue

HQueue is Houdini’s free distributed render and simulation manager.

See about HQueue for information on what HQueue is, how it works, and what it can do for you.

Subtopics

Getting started

  • About HQueue

    HQueue is a general-purpose job management system. You can use it to distribute renders, simulations, and other work to remote clients.

  • Installation

    How to set up a basic HQueue farm.

  • Configuration

    How to set configuration options for the HQueue server and clients.

  • How to submit jobs

    How to put work on the farm.

Managing the farm

  • Managing clients

    How to use the web interface or local logins to add, remove, restart, and manage client machines.

  • Managing jobs

    How to view and manage jobs on the farm.

  • Managing client groups

    How to use the web interface or local logins to create and manage groups of client machines.

  • Notes

    Each client and job can have informational notes attached.

  • Resources

    You can specify what resources (such as licenses) are available on each client, so jobs can be scheduled on clients where they can run.

  • Network Folders

    How to use the Network Folder management page.

Next steps

  • Logging

    Hqueue stores separate logs for errors and scheduling events, and each client also generates a log.

  • Uninstalling

    How to uninstall the HQueue server or client software.

  • FAQs

    Answers to frequently asked questions.

Guru level

  • Remote API

    You can connect to the HQueue server over the network and call functions to manipulate and query jobs and other information.

  • Jobs specification details

    More detail on the internals of a job specification for users who want to submit custom jobs.

  • Switching to MySQL (Linux only)

    You can optionally configure HQueue to use MySQL instead of SQLite on Linux.

Houdini 18.0

Getting started

Using Houdini

  • Geometry

    How Houdini represents geometry and how to create and edit it.

  • Copying and instancing

    How to use copies (real geometry) and instances (loaded or created at render time).

  • Animation

    How to create and keyframe animation in Houdini.

  • Character

    How to rig and animate characters in Houdini.

  • Digital assets

    Digital assets let you create reusable nodes and tools from existing networks.

  • Import and export

    How to get scene, object, and other data in and out of Houdini.

  • Executing Tasks

    How to define dependencies and schedule tasks using TOP networks.

  • MPlay viewer

    Using Houdini’s stand-alone image viewer.

Dynamics

  • Particles

    How to create particle simulations.

  • Dynamics

    How to use Houdini’s dynamics networks to create simulations.

  • Vellum

    Vellum uses a Position Based Dynamics approach to cloth, hair, grains, and softbody objects.

  • Pyro

    How to simulate smoke, fire, and explosions.

  • Fluids

    How to set up fluid and ocean simulations.

  • Destruction

    How to break different types of materials.

  • Grains

    How to simulate grainy materials (such as sand).

  • Crowd simulations

    How to create and simulate crowds of characters in Houdini.

  • Hair and Fur

    How to create, style, and add dynamics to hair and fur.

  • Finite Elements

    How to create and simulate deformable objects

Nodes

  • OBJ - Object nodes

    Object nodes represent objects in the scene, such as character parts, geometry objects, lights, cameras, and so on.

  • SOP - Geometry nodes

    Geometry nodes live inside Geo objects and generate geometry.

  • DOP - Dynamics nodes

    Dynamics nodes set up the conditions and rules for dynamics simulations.

  • VOP - Shader nodes

    VOP nodes let you define a program (such as a shader) by connecting nodes together. Houdini then compiles the node network into executable VEX code.

  • ROP - Render nodes

    Render nodes either render the scene or set up render dependency networks.

  • CHOP - Channel nodes

    Channel nodes create, filter, and manipulate channel data.

  • COP2 - Compositing nodes

    Composite nodes create, filter, and manipulate image data.

  • TOP - Task nodes

    TOP nodes define a workflow where data is fed into the network, turned into "work items" and manipulated by different nodes. Many nodes represent external processes that can be run on the local machine or a server farm.

Lighting, rendering, and compositing

  • Solaris

    Solaris is the umbrella name for Houdini’s scene building, layout, lighting, and rendering tools based on the Universal Scene Description (USD) framework.

  • Rendering

    How to render images and animation from the 3D scene.

  • Materials

    How to assign materials and create custom materials for shading.

  • Compositing

    Houdini’s compositing networks let you create and manipulate images such as renders.

Reference

  • Menus

    Explains each of the items in the main menus.

  • Viewers

    Viewer pane types.

  • Panes

    Documents the options in various panes.

  • Windows

    Documents the options in various user interface windows.

  • Stand-alone utilities

    Houdini includes a large number of useful command-line utility programs.

  • Python Scripting

    How to script Houdini using Python and the Houdini Object Model.

  • Expression functions

    Expression functions let you compute the value of parameters.

  • HScript commands

    HScript is Houdini’s legacy scripting language.

  • VEX

    VEX is a high-performance expression language used in many places in Houdini, such as writing shaders.

  • Properties

    Properties let you set up flexible and powerful hierarchies of rendering, shading, lighting, and camera parameters.

  • Python Panels

    You can script custom pane types using Python to create your own UIs.

  • Galleries

    Pre-made materials included with Houdini.

  • Houdini Packages

    How to write and combine multiple environment variable definition files for different plug-ins, tools, and add-ons.