What’s new HQueue

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Improved Karma and USD Integration ¶

Karma and USD render jobs now report progress.
Added a new sidefx.license.karma resource type to HQueue for tracking Karma license usage on the farm.
Added a new USD render workflow to the HQueue Render ROP that generates .usd files from a Karma ROP, USD Render ROP or USD Render ROP LOP and then renders frames from the generated .usd files. This enables HQueue render jobs to acquire Karma render licenses instead of Houdini licenses for rendering. The new render workflow is used when the USD Output File parameter is checked on, which is the default.

Note that the option to render frames directly from the .hip file is still available by unchecking the USD Output File parameter.
Added a new USD render workflow to the HQueue Render ROP that renders from pre-generated .usd files. The new workflow is used when the Use Existing USDs option is chosen in the HQueue Render ROP.

HQueue Clients on Windows can now auto-map network drives on startup. Add the optional [mapped_network_drives] section in the HQueue Client configuration file to register auto-mapped network drives. See Mapped Network Drives for details.

Added new HOUDINI_HQUEUE_* environment variables to control the default server and HFS settings in HQueue ROP and HQueue Scheduler TOP nodes. See HQueue environment variables.
HQueue ROP nodes now support platform-specific HFS paths. This helps when sending jobs to farms composed of machines with mixed operating systems.
The HQueue Server, Directories to Create and HFS parameters in HQueue ROP nodes now support parameter expressions. A side effect of this change is that dollar sign characters used for variables in these parameter values must be escaped if you want the variables to evaluate on the farm and not evaluate locally.

For example, if you previously had “$HQROOT/path/to/hfs” in the Target HFS parameter, then you need to change it to “\$HQROOT/path/to/hfs”.