Can we open houdini and then ask houdini to generate a bunch of nodes through Windows CMD or MacOS terminal?

- Ji

you should try to watch Ari Danish tutorials.

http://www.sidefx.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=2262&Itemid=132 [sidefx.com]

++

You can open houdini's command-line version (AKA hbatch) and do everything through hscript commands, works great and it's the best thing for rendering heavy scenes withought the overhead of the GUI.
If you save a sequence of commands as a .cmd file, there's a way to import and execute that list through hbatch using
cmdread

Alternatively there's a “python version” of hbatch, but I've never used so can't help you here, though it's probably in the documentation.

Cheers

You could use Hython, where you can work with Houdini scenes, place nodes, render stuff, do all the things you want. I prefer it over taking the batch approach, as it's more OOP and easy to embed in to an existing pipeline that works with python.

This might be of some help: http://www.apileofgrains.nl/opening-up-houdini/ [apileofgrains.nl]

It describes how to open a port and connect to Houdini using Python. But the first part describes more generic HOM information

thank you all very much for the advices!

What I want to do is something like:

1. assume houdini is installed on a server
2. through a customized web interface, upload certain 3D model files to the server from somewhere else.
3. when the “start houdini” button on the web interface is pressed, certain customized Python scripts on the server will be executed
4, the houdini installed on the server will start, and it will also start to import certain Digital Assets libraries, generate all kinds of nodes and networks, including the nodes importing the 3D models files uploaded and those nodes doing certain manipulation or simulation to the imported models
5. when the “run simulation” button on the web interface is pressed, the houdini on the server will start to run the simulation and produce the results which might be exported to other software for post-processing …

Anyway, I'll dig into the approaches as suggested.

- Ji

The scenario you describe is a common one. You will also want this tool to manage env vars on the workstations, render machines and servers as well.

So many ways to wrap around hscript, hython or python including HOM module, create boot-strap HDA's or if you are super-enterprising with the HDK, even write your own stand-alone app that does very specific things (data converters being the most common).

The common element with all of the above is the acquisition of a Non-Graphics batch license so if you want to work out from the license acquisition, you will see that the number of options are pretty much infinite. Batch is licensed per machine so you can run as many processes against that hbatch license on that given machine.

Work out exactly what it is you want to do along with pipeline diagrams (napkin sketch is fine) and mentally run through some typical scenarios. Then inspect what you want to do and then look at the tools you have/know and apply them as needed. It could involve python/hython as one of the core tools along with javascript, xml, mysql, and others brought in where needed. If Houdini is your only tool, the pipeline gets pretty simple to implement.

thank you, jeff! I'll read more on the methods as suggested.