Hi all,

I've been using the Indie version of Houdini for a while now on my freelance work and I love it.
So much so that I think I've convinced my main employer to invest in some seats!

One of the BIG draws for us would be Mantra. I believe I read somewhere that with the purchase of Houdini FX you get unlimited render node licenses… but do is that all we need to setup a render farm?

With Houdini Indie I have to use Houdini Engine for any batch processing including rendering. Works great at home for
freelance work especially since Indie comes with 3 engine seats!

Using Houdini FX would we need to buy an Engine License for each render machine?

You only need engine licenses for machines that are running hython/hbatch, not for mantra. Ifd generation is handled by hbatch on your farm or on your artists' workstation using an interactive license. Simulations that run on the farm will also consume houdini engine licenses. Mantra may consume a Houdini Engine license if the render uses a houdini engine ‘full’ procedural.

Depending on how big your farm is and what type of workload you are expecting, you may only need engine licenses for a portion of your farm machines. You may get by on none if all processing is handled by workstations. However, the ability to run tasks such as simulations and geometry exports in parallel on the farm can be a huge productivity boost, so take that into consideration.

Interesting!

I know we'll need at least one Engine license, we do a lot of work with Unity. For the most part, at least to start, we'd be using the small farm (10 machines) just to run mantra renders. All the simulation work would be done on our workstations.

If that's the case, would we just have to run hqueue client on our render nodes? Then submit from within Houdini on our workstations (making sure ifd option is on)? Does Houdini just process ifd files as commanded by Hqueue without needing a license?

I've almost got the powers that be sold on Houdini but a big selling point would the ability to use all of our render machines (and future ones) without having to pay extra per machine!

As long as your workstations handle the ifd creation, and the ifd files are saved to a place the farm machines can see, then you don't need engine for the farm. You may need to make some workflow considerations when using artist workstations exclusively to generate ifd, as artist time is probably more expensive than engine licenses.

I have not used HQUEUE so I can't speak to it's operation.

Thanks! That's what I figured- I've only used Indie and ifd creation is disabled. I suspected that ifd's will render w/out a license and that's why they're disabled in the Indie version.

I'm coming from (prior to using Houdini Indie) 3ds Max and backburner. With that package, all you do is select “submit to network render.” Max creates an archive of sorts with all the needed assets (geometry, shaders, textures, etc) and sends that off to the available nodes. Nodes then unzip the archive and start rendering frames assigned by backburner.

Is the ifd process anything like that? If I were to render an Pyro sim that's 240 frames- would Houdini generate an ifd per frame? (I don't know why… probably need another coffee but that's the impression I get at the moment…) The actual sim would of course be stored on a network location so that wouldn't get bundled up (we do that for Max/Vray/Phoenix work now).

Also, Jsmack, can I ask what (if any) render queue manager you use?

Thanks again!

You are correct, a single ifd, “instantaneous frame description,” is required per frame under most circumstances. (if the only difference between frames is something that a script can change, then technically you can create one ifd, and then modify it with that script, but that is another topic)

As for farm management, my facility uses qube from pipelinefx.

Got it- well at least I was reading the documents correctly!
Those ifds could get heavy then- unless of course all of geo was externally referenced, but then I see what you mean about artist time being more costly than Engine time.

So the way I see it is that if one is brave enough you could get away without an engine license but for a more automated setup (like what I get using Indie) use the Engine method.

Thanks for all the input!

The external geo is actualy realy cool. look at packed disc primitives. It keeps the ifd files ultra small.