I am getting this message, and not sure what to do. PRMAN works as it is normal PRMAN 11 and it works with Maya 4.5 MTOR. Mine is Win2K box.
Houdini is Master Commercial 5.5.36

Dave Rindner

Could you post the message?

Not a MS guy, but I believe that sounds like you're missing the location of prman in your $PATH. Check your environment variables in win2000 and ensure that the location of render in in $PATH.

Cheers,

J.C.

Thats what it sas.

“prman proccess failed” upon press of render button.

I have 5.5.305 (latest) Master Commercial, and PRman 11.0.1 installed in
c:\program files\pixar.

DR

could it be that Houdini doesn't like the space in “c:\program files\pixar” ?

Hi

If space is an issue, try something like “CPROGRA~1/pixar”

Hope that helped.
A.

I don't understand what you guys are saying! Issue with what space? Where are the Renderman preferences in Houdini that I need to set? Your answers are so cryptic to me.
I mean I don't have any decent instruction set. The on Renderman in Tutorial is weak (almost useless). It describes that you need PRMA 3.6-3.9 where as I am provided v 11.0.1.

The PDF sas following
“To properly set up RenderMan with Houdini, you first need to set up some environment
variables. These are:
RMAN_SHADERPATH
Search path for RenderMan shaders (sets option)
HOUDINI_PATH
Houdini search path ( this is used for the dialog files)
RMAN_TEXTUREPATH
Search path for RenderMan textures (sets option)
RMAN_SHADERPATH
setenv JOB /usr/jobs/ROGI # Make sure directory exists
setenv RMAN_SHADERPATH ”.:$JOB/Shaders:$HOME/Shadersusr/local/houdini/houdini/
ri_shaders:&“”

WHERE IS THIS SET? It looks to me like IRIX scripting.
What I need are clear, and concise instructions, on how to get Houdini 5.5.305 to work with NT Renderman V 11.0.1 on Win2KPro system.

Right now if I try to render with PRMAN I get
“CreateProcess failed for 'prman” error in Houdini Console. Not very usefull information. About as usefull as check engine light in car. You know something is wrong, but no way to trouble shoot it.

I know that PRMAN works and is setup correctly, becouse Maya renders through it with MTOR. But Houdini does not, so fault is clearly in Houdini setup.

Dave Rindner

All of those are environment variables. If you are in windows 2k then just right click on “My Computer”, select properties, Advanced Tab, click on the Environment Variables Button, add each of the variabes under System Variables section.

On the left type RMAN_SHADERPATH and on the right enter in the path.
like “PMyShaders;&” or whatever.

Now I don't have access to PRMan anymore (or a Master license for that matter) so this is based on what's left in my memory. :?

Make sure your RMANTREE is set correctly. Since Maya is working then it probably is. Make sure prman is in your path. You can check to see if prman is in your path by hitting “Start”, “Run”, then type prman. If you get an error then its not in your path. The “space” that actor and alex referred to is the spaces in “C:\program files\pixar”. Spaces in path names cause trouble sometimes so if you try “CPROGRA~1/pixar” it might work.

Its hard to figure out these types of problems since a lot depends on the user's system setup.

jim.

David,

When we speaks of the setting those path, we meant setting those variable in your environment path. I am not on Windows at the moment, so I might get a few steps wrong.

Press WinKey + Pause. This will open up your System Property path. Next go to “Advanced tab” or something, and there you sound find something like “Environment” or “Environment Variable”. Go in there and you should see something like User Variable (affect only a specific users only) at the top and System Variable (affect the entire system) at the bottom.


In your System Variable, you should be able to find something called “PATH”. Double click on that. At the end of the line where it contain all these paths and all, and something like this:
%RATTREE%/bin;%RMANTREE%/bin

Windows uses ; to separate between different paths. UNIX uses : to separate between different paths. UNIX also uses $ to specify something as variable whereas Windows uses %% to specify the variable.

If you can't click on any of the System Variable because of your restricted access, you can add the PATH to your User Variable by click on that “New” button. Create a PATH and add the variable as seen above. User Variable will not overwrite the System Variable, so you don't have to worry too much about breaking it.

For the most part, you probably don't really need to worry too much about RMAN_SHADERPATH, HOUDINI_PATH, RMAN_TEXTUREPATH. Usually, RMAN_SHADERPATH and RMAN_TEXTUREPATH can be specified in your RMAN ROP.

You should be all set now.
If worse come to worse, in your RMAN ROP's Render Command field, just type in “CPROGRA~1/pixar/prman-11.0/bin/prman” explicitly to find the renderman path.

The reason you don't have to specify these variables for MAYA/MTOR was because Pixar already set it for you. I don't really konw why Pixar didn't append those variables to PATH. If you don't put those into your PATH, you can't do command line rendering from command prompt anyway.

So that's the reason why it won't work at first in Houdini as Houdini is trying to call the commands.

Hope that helped.
Alex

well I can't say for sure as I don't have PRman ( ) but I do know that Houdini seems pretty sensitive to spaces in path names:
no spaces : Houdini/likes/paths/like/this
spaces : Houdini/Really Hates/Paths Like This/

so if PRman is working (alone or with Maya etc) then the problem is Houdini…and the space in the path to PRman ‘might’ be the problem.

the environment variables can all be set using:
Right Click on My Documents > select Properties > click the Advanced Tab > in the middle is a button called ‘Environment Variables’ > in the dialog there is a section called System Variables…you can set the variables from the PDF by clicking on New.. then put, for eg. RMAN_SHADERPATH in the Variable Name and then in the Variable Value you put the path…but here is where you need to be careful with spaces. Windows can deal with spaces, and so can Maya and PRman, but Houdini doesn't…so lets say you have your shaders in c:\my renderman shaders\ this will not work for Houdini….it should be something like c:\myRendermanShaders. so only put a path without spaces.

give that a try and see if it works… :wink:


edit - damnit!!!..beaten twice today… :x
we all must have been typing at the same time..lol

edit - damnit!!!..beaten twice today…
we all must have been typing at the same time..lol

Actor, just do what I do.

Post a reply with just your name, then use the edit function. :wink:

jim.

well that's just not right…. :wink:

Got it working! SWEEEEETTTT!
I used full path in render command. Now thats the kind of directions I can use!

Thanx all.

Dave Rindner

glad to hear it…

Minor helpful addition (if no-one mentioned this):

Houdini likes Unix “/”'s as opposed to NT “\”'s despite platform. (including the environment paths set).

Henster