Ways to submit jobs

There are two types of submission for Houdini:

  • External: 
    The rrSubmitter application reads the scene file itself and gets required informations.

  • Scripted with In-Scene nodes:
    A script running in Houdini processes all nodes.
    And you can add RR nodes into your scene to control the submission.



General information about a job submission





Archive render

Your Mantra/ Arnold/ Redshift/ VRay /Renderman nodes can be set to generate archive files ( .ifd.sc, .ass.gz, .rs, ... ).

If these nodes are set to create archive files, then the rrSubmitter setups two jobs.

One to generate the archive sequence and one to render the archive sequence.

Note: Rendering the archive files does NOT require a Houdini license, only a renderer licenses.


Compressed Archives:

It is recommended to export in a compressed file format.

The format extension is ".ifd.sc" for Mantra,  ".ass.gz" for Arnold and ".rib.gz" for prman.

Just change the extension in your export node.




Unsupported nodes  /  Verify output visually

You want to export something and the node you want to use is not supported by RR?

Or you want to be able to view the geometry that is exported by RR?


Simply create an additional Mantra node.

This way you can directly check if everything is right. You do not want to end up with a broken sim after 2 days of simulation.


This is an example file that writes a fluid simulation, but by using a Mantra node to render the scene file:

www.RoyalRender.de/download/web/houdini_fluid_caching.zip




"Frame after frame" simulations


Some simulations need to be written one frame after another and therefore it is not possible to split the sequence across multiple machines.
There are two cases of simulations:


  1. The simulation that can be stopped and continued.
    Please enable the rrJob option "Distribute Start To End" and set "Max Clients At A Time" to 1.
    (You might need to press the "Show All" button in rrSubmitter to see the settings)

  2. The simulation has to be run at once. (Example: Caching all frames into one single alembic file)
    If you have a simulation that cannot be stopped and continued, set the Sequence Divide min to 0.
    RR sends the whole frame range at once to one client.
    If the rrClient rendering the whole sequence is aborted/disabled, then the whole frame range is send again to some rrClient.



Hint: External Submission:  If you add  _sim_  (including both underscores) to the name of your ROP, then RR sets these required rrJob options for you.



Wedges

The rules for "Supported Node Locations/Names" apply for wegde nodes as well.


The requirements are:

  • Wedge method: By Channel
  • Random Samples: Off 
  • Each parameter requires to have its name set
  • The wedges node name has to contain "wedge".
  • old RR 8.2.xx limitation: The max length for the wedge node with path (e.g. "/out/ropnet1/wedge1") is 22 characters.


Example scene:

www.RoyalRender.de/download/web/wedge_example.zip 



Stereo Cam Rig

RR detects stereo cam rigs.

But the camera name in your output node has to contain "stereocamrig" for now.