JColdrick
What OS you running? Houdini doesn't run on OSX. I know there's ways to install other OS's on Mac hardware nowadays, but I'm not up on it. One of the bigger stumbling blocks is that OGL support on Macs falls behind the other platforms.
I've heard Rush is pretty good for the bucks. We use Sun Grid Engine here, but in your scenario, to get up and running with the least headaches(and writing the least number of wrappers ), sounds like, apart from OSX, that should do the trick.
Cheers,
J.C.
P.S. If the Mac thing becomes an issue and you're going mini for the costs, then you should look at regular intel render nodes. It's cheap.
hey, thanks for the reply. We're not actually running houdini on the mini's but just using the nodes to be sent to the farm to render. unless houdini needs to be on each of the mac mini's on the farm to render. but then that's where Rush comes in to manage the renders.