Doing some checking on the Houdini products.

What exactly does “unlimited render tokens” mean? I can render on as many machines as I want with one license? That seems a bit too good, so where's the catch?

When you purchase either Houdini Master or Houdini Escape we generally give about 5 tokens by default. If you want more then you simply request it from your sales manager and we give you as many as you need.

The Mantra tokens render ifd files which can be created by your Master/Escape license. If you don't want to tie up your interactive license for this task then you may want to consider one or more Houdini Batch licenses to generate ifds for you. The Batch licenses can also do other things like run simulations and run scripts which makes it worth having it around.

Robert

It means you can get an unlimited number of mantra licenses, so you can render on as many machines as you like.

However, to generate IFDs that mantra reads for rendering, you need a license. Commonly this is where the bottleneck is and is why people buy extra HBatch licenses.

…and you have also an option to render remotely on you local machine - by sucking all available processing power from your local network - great for stills and quick tests.
From that moment on I started enjoying observing render buckets.