I had a chat with the network admins and they're loath to do this, the firewalls are there for security purposes. So now I'm thinking a way around it is to run a VPN on the farms cloud nodes and have the workstations sit on that VPN. It's going to be complicated.

This is what I'm seeing running on the farm node.


BTW I note that there is potential problem here as well besides the network issue. The hip file, sitting on the same mounted file system /g/data/z03 is not strictly under

hqserver.sharedNetwork.path.linux = /g/data/z03/hqueue

which is where houdini_distros/hfs.linux-x86_64 etc lives.

This works fine for hqueue rendering which isn't adding the $HQROOT in front of the absolute path “/g/data/z03/drw900/tmp/PDG/untitled.hip”.

seelan
The HQueue scheduler parm interface allows to set custom callback port ranges. Any possibility of setting up a custom range, then opening up just those ports through the firewall? Or if you can at least do a test with firewall off, then perhaps with allowing just those ports, that way we can confirm the firewall is the problem.

Hi all, reposting this one from the main forum…

I'm just beginning to play with the hqueuescheduler in TOPS and having no luck getting things going. A ropgeometry1_ropfetch* jobs seem to run but make no forward progress, hqserver.log isn't giving me much help. I'm wondering what ports need to be open for this stuff as we run hqueue in a fairly locked down environment. The hqueue installation is running fine for normal render jobs.

More investigation would suggest that the PDG processes being spawned by hqueue on the renderfarm are trying to connect back (via xmlrpc) to the originating workstation? Unfortunately our renderfarm and workstations networks are firewalled off. So it looks like a no go for the time being, or maybe some convoluted tunneling setups.

Wondering if this is going to be a limitation for all job schedulers, I'm interested in implementing a SLURM scheduler here. How many big installations allow renderfarm nodes to see the artist workstations and vice versa?

Following up to my own post, more investigation would suggest that the PDG processes being spawned by hqueue on the renderfarm are trying to connect back (via xmlrpc) to the originating workstation and unfortunately our renderfarm and workstations networks are firewalled off. So it looks like a no go for the time being, or maybe some convoluted tunneling setups.

Hi all,

I'm just beginning to play with the hqueuescheduler in TOPS and having no luck getting things going. A ropgeometry1_ropfetch* jobs seem to run but make no forward progress, hqserver.log isn't giving me much help. I'm wondering what ports need to be open for this stuff as we run hqueue in a fairly locked down environment. The hqueue installation is running fine for normal render jobs.

-Drew

Thanks Jonathan,

Studying your hip file at the moment. FYI this was what I was working towards …

-Drew

Replying to my own post, the secret was to transform the incoming position from space:current to space:world in the shader.

But I'd like to ask a followup question, how do I now get a SOP volume to be the input to the Volume Sample VOP, instead of loading from file? I don't know how to plumb this up?

Replying to my own post, the secret was to transform the incoming position from space:current to space:world in the shader.

But I'd like to ask a followup question, how do I now get a SOP volume to be the input to the Volume Sample VOP, instead of loading from file? I don't know how to plumb this up?

Hi all,

I'm trying to lookup the density value of a volume in a surface shader. She surface being shaded is spatially located inside the volume. I've looked at the Volume Sample VOP but it doesn't appear to be doing anything in the shader context? I'm trying to achieve something similar to the Volume Slice SOP, except for arbitrary slicing geometry, and for it to be done efficiently at render time.

Any help appreciated.

-Drew

Cetras
For simple tasks, Hqueue is a perfect tool, with a great python API, for big farms and complex jobs, I wouldn't go for it …

Out of interest, what would you go for ? What are people using these days ?


Thanks,
Drew

On a lark I tried to export an OBJ from Houdini FX. It popped up a request to renew my license - and also seemed to export OBJ's fine. Then I went back to normal Houdini, and it also had started working. SO WEIRD.

I had tried re-exporting the obj's literally 5 minutes earlier and they were still 0 byte files. So it isn't related to a computer restart or something silly like that.

Anyway, seems fine now go figure. If it was related to some licensing thing, I sure wish there had been an error/warning to give me a hint.

I'm new to Houdini - but tried to follow some basic tutorials on how to export an .OBJ from Apprentice (version 13 for OSX).

I select my SOP (a simple sphere), right click it, and select “Save Geometry”. It pops up the file export dialog where I select my format. However every format I try including .Obj creates a 0 byte file. The one exception is the .geo format, which did create a 3kb file with valid points.

Is this normal? Am I missing something really obvious? Thanks for the help.

Hi all,

Has anyone got a recipe for building python c/c++ extensions that will work under H10.0 OSX? I'm trying to use Numpy but I'm having a lot of trouble getting it compiled. Apple doesn't provide an X86_64 python25 binary. Macports can't build an x86_64 python25 or python26. I get the following if I use the H10.0 python25


/Library/Frameworks/Houdini.framework/Versions/10.0.595/Resources/python/bin/python2.5-64 setup.py build
Running from numpy source directory.
non-existing path in ‘numpy/distutils’: ‘site.cfg’
F2PY Version 2
blas_opt_info:
FOUND:
extra_link_args =
define_macros =
extra_compile_args =

lapack_opt_info:
FOUND:
extra_link_args =
define_macros =
extra_compile_args =

running build
running config_cc
unifing config_cc, config, build_clib, build_ext, build commands –compiler options
running config_fc
unifing config_fc, config, build_clib, build_ext, build commands –fcompiler options
running build_src
build_src
building py_modules sources
building library “npymath” sources
customize NAGFCompiler
Could not locate executable f95
customize AbsoftFCompiler
Could not locate executable f90
Could not locate executable f77
customize IBMFCompiler
Could not locate executable xlf90
Could not locate executable xlf
customize IntelFCompiler
Could not locate executable ifort
Could not locate executable ifc
customize GnuFCompiler
Could not locate executable g77
customize Gnu95FCompiler
Could not locate executable gfortran
customize G95FCompiler
Could not locate executable g95
don't know how to compile Fortran code on platform ‘posix’
C compiler: gcc-4.2 -fno-strict-aliasing -mno-fused-madd -fno-common -dynamic -DNDEBUG -g -fwrapv -Os -Wall -Wstrict-prototypes -DMACOSX -I/usr/include/ffi -DENABLE_DTRACE -arch i386 -arch ppc -pipe

compile options: ‘-Inumpy/core/src/private -Inumpy/core/src -Inumpy/core -Inumpy/core/src/npymath -Inumpy/core/src/multiarray -Inumpy/core/src/umath -Inumpy/core/include -I/System/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.5/include/python2.5 -c’
gcc-4.2: _configtest.c
gcc-4.2 _configtest.o -o _configtest
ld: warning: in _configtest.o, missing required architecture x86_64 in file
Undefined symbols:
“_main”, referenced from:
start in crt1.10.6.o
ld: symbol(s) not found
collect2: ld returned 1 exit status
ld: warning: in _configtest.o, missing required architecture x86_64 in file
Undefined symbols:
“_main”, referenced from:
start in crt1.10.6.o
ld: symbol(s) not found
collect2: ld returned 1 exit status
failure.
removing: _configtest.c _configtest.o
Traceback (most recent call last):
File “setup.py”, line 187, in <module>
setup_package()
File “setup.py”, line 180, in setup_package
configuration=configuration )
File “/Users/drw900/Downloads/numpy-1.4.1rc2/numpy/distutils/core.py”, line 186, in setup
return old_setup(**new_attr)
File “/System/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.5/lib/python2.5/distutils/core.py”, line 151, in setup
dist.run_commands()
File “/System/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.5/lib/python2.5/distutils/dist.py”, line 974, in run_commands
self.run_command(cmd)
File “/System/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.5/lib/python2.5/distutils/dist.py”, line 994, in run_command
cmd_obj.run()
File “/Users/drw900/Downloads/numpy-1.4.1rc2/numpy/distutils/command/build.py”, line 37, in run
old_build.run(self)
File “/System/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.5/lib/python2.5/distutils/command/build.py”, line 112, in run
self.run_command(cmd_name)
File “/System/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.5/lib/python2.5/distutils/cmd.py”, line 333, in run_command
self.distribution.run_command(command)
File “/System/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.5/lib/python2.5/distutils/dist.py”, line 994, in run_command
cmd_obj.run()
File “/Users/drw900/Downloads/numpy-1.4.1rc2/numpy/distutils/command/build_src.py”, line 152, in run
self.build_sources()
File “/Users/drw900/Downloads/numpy-1.4.1rc2/numpy/distutils/command/build_src.py”, line 163, in build_sources
self.build_library_sources(*libname_info)
File “/Users/drw900/Downloads/numpy-1.4.1rc2/numpy/distutils/command/build_src.py”, line 298, in build_library_sources
sources = self.generate_sources(sources, (lib_name, build_info))
File “/Users/drw900/Downloads/numpy-1.4.1rc2/numpy/distutils/command/build_src.py”, line 385, in generate_sources
source = func(extension, build_dir)
File “numpy/core/setup.py”, line 657, in get_mathlib_info
raise RuntimeError(“Broken toolchain: cannot link a simple C program”)
RuntimeError: Broken toolchain: cannot link a simple C program
(hython10.0) ~/Downloads/numpy-1.4.1rc2/



I have the latest Xcode and can develop HDK extensions so the toolchain is all there. Any ideas ?

This is all much easier in the Linux world ….

-Drew

Here is a file that sidefx support adapted for me to get around an unrelated problem. Their solution used ApplyRelationship for some fairly advanced DOP stamping voodoo.

-Drew

Soothsayer
thanks, not sure I understand quite how to transfer and implement it to my scene, but I'll keep messing with it..

Not sure how things will go on vmware fusion, but I've been able to use VirtualBox successfully to run Ubuntu, Win32 and Win64 guests on both a Linux and Mac host by setting HOUDINI_OGL_SOFTWARE=1. The performance is good enough for testing builds of HDK tools, I don't think you'd want to use it for day to day work.

-Drew

itriix
just was curious if anyone has tried using houdini through vmware fusion 3… i have a multi-boot setup already which i know is “better”, and i know that older emulation software was definitely almost unusable in respects to true performance, however, with some of the new additions to vmware fusion 3, with opengl 2.1 and directx 9, i'm curious how the performance is.

Anyone tried this out?
Thanks,
Jonathan

I stand corrected :wink:

-Drew

edward

drew
Don't forget that most complex algorithms are non trivial, if not impossible, to parallelize.

I have a handy script for this. Just copy/paste this code into your Windows > Python Shell window.

from threading import Thread
class UseFullPower(Thread):
def run(self):
cycle = 0
full_yet = False
while not full_yet:
cycle = cycle + 1

doit = UseFullPower()
doit.start()

Don't forget that most complex algorithms are non trivial, if not impossible, to parallelize. FCS and COPS benefit from multiple cores because many pixel operations are trivially easy to distribute across threads.

-Drew

Houdini_Apprentice09

jason_iversen

Houdini_Apprentice09
… cutting render times on ANY machine in half, or on an OCT core MAC PRO, by an eighth of the time!

Are you aware that Mantra is fully multithreaded, and the Houdini fluid simulator is partially multithreaded but also distributed over multiple machines? You just need to run on a commercial license of Houdini.

More info: http://odforce.net/wiki/index.php/HoudiniApprentice [odforce.net]

I realize that MANTRA is fully multithreaded, however when simulating RBD objects it utilizes only 50%

I actually do have a MacBook Pro with 10.6.2, it also decided to die in the last week and is currently receiving a new motherboard, it's been a long week :roll:

My linux desktop at work just packed up this week, 3 months after the support contract expired, so now I'm in the market for a new machine. I'd quite like to have a MacPro but with this Houdini issue taking forever to get fixed up and the fact that they don't support high end graphics cards I can't really make the switch with confidence. $10k+ will most likely still be going to Dell/HP.

See

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environment_variables [en.wikipedia.org]

Specifically the bit that says “The most common method of setting an environment variable in Windows is via <Control Panelystem:Advanced:Environment Variables>”.

I'm seeing some sort of problem where ROPs fired off from the main GUI fail after around 800-900 frames which seems to be related to running out of file descriptors (10.0.374 Ubuntu9.04). I wonder if it's related ?

-Drew