My setup:

- 1 Houdini FX workstation license (with 5 Karma tokens)
- 2 PCs: one used as my main workstation, and the other intended for rendering

My situation:
I’m not a technical artist, and I’m the only Houdini user in my company. So I’m trying to figure out how to use my second PC for rendering while continuing to work on my main machine with little to no knowledge.

I’ve found very little documentation that I can either find or understand on how to set this up. Topics like HQueue or Husk feel completely alien to me, and I haven’t been able to find any step-by-step guides that explain the process in a beginner-friendly way.
On top of that, my company has multiple layers of firewall restrictions and internal procedures for installing software, setting up servers, or even opening a terminal (for example, sending an IP address from my main PC to the second PC).

My question:
Given these constraints, does anyone have advice on the simplest or most practical way to use my extra PC for rendering?

Thank you!

One pretty easy solution is Deadline. (https://docs.thinkboxsoftware.com/products/deadline/10.4/1_User%20Manual/manual/index-introduction-to-deadline.html) It is free nowadays for less the x computers and it is not too complicated to setup and has a good feature-set imho.

If you get it working, please make a tutorial!

w_maro
If you get it working, please make a tutorial!

Seriously? Maybe on a mixed farm with different kinds of OS, but i've had nothing but walks in the park when installing this. Granted, i've been using it for well over 15 years now, from when it was still thinkbox software, so maybe I've grown accustomed to it, but iirc it is as simple as installing executables on windows where the whole process of making a mongo db is done step by step and explained well in the documentation.
What part are you struggling with?