Now that I have Hqueue rendering, I seem to have a different issue. The machine can render to file fine but when I try to do it via a submitted job from another machine, the image is black. I'm guessing it might have something to do with the hquser since the local Houdini interactive render that works is done with a different account. Thoughts?

I should note that Hqueue shows the job as executing successfully even though the image is black

Hello,

My initial thought is that it's a file dependency path problem. Check your .hip file and verify that all file paths referenced by the .hip file can be accessed by both machines. Basically you are trying to eliminate hard-coded local paths like C:/ and replace them with platform-independent path variables like $HIP.

The easiest way to examine file dependencies is to open the File Dependencies dialog from the Render -> Pre-Flight Scene… menu option.

Bad file dependencies can cause black renders (because of missing file resources) among other things.

Cheers,
Rob

thanks but there are no textures or HDRs referenced in the scene and, like I said, it renders fine when I launch Houdini on the same machine and render from there.

Hmmm. If it's a problem with the hquser account then you could try manually rendering the file as hquser without the use of HQueue and see if that works. Perhaps there's a file permission that's preventing hquser from producing a successful render.

Otherwise, would you be able to send me a couple of files for testing/inspection?
- the .hip file and file dependencies
- the output log file for the job that rendered the black frame
- the diagnostics file for the job that rendered the black frame

Cheers,
Rob