Our clever folk got tractor and pdg working again (more firewall esoterica), I was keen to try rendering a lop graph on the farm with pdg.

How does one do this?

Couldn't see a lop fetch or karma top, trying a rop fetch that pointed to a karma lop errored. I assume I'm missing something obvious!

-matt

There are USD Render and ROP USD Output TOPs. Pointing a ROP Fetch at a Karma LOP probably doesn't work because the Karma LOP is a LOP HDA with a ROP inside, not a ROP itself. I expect you could point a ROP Fetch at the USD Render node inside the Karma LOP?

The easiest way is probably to use a ROP USD Top to generate the .usd file from the LOP node, followed by a USD Render Top to render that .usd using husk/karma.

You should also be able to point a ROP Fetch Top directly at a USD Render ROP, or a Karma LOP. However there were some fixes in recent version of 18.0 to support that last case, so you will want to try it with a recent daily build of 18.0.

I was able to use a Fetch ROP pointing at Karma LOP which would use Hscript to gen the USD and render it, which worked. Not production useful of course, but at least it works!

I need to try the gen USD then render USD that you mention Chris, are there any special setups required?

Example would be especially helpful

Will there be a standard ROP setup for this at some point though, to gen USD then render it via karma without going through PDG?

Cheers,

Peter B

Here's an example of using the ROP USD / USD Render Tops

Tried that example locally with latest daily build (18.0.357), getting that error that seems to have plagued a few people, karma thinks it can't find a licence. The top error:


Any chance this is assuming our university education licenses are apprentice licences? I recall having a similar problem with pdg several months ago. I've asked our IT guy to check the license server is the H18 version, not the old H17.5 one, will find out shortly…

time passes…

Ok, the license server was out out date, got that fixed. Making progress, but it's difficult. Getting lops to render from pdg locally is mostly ok, getting it to work through tractor is about 50% success. Even locally about 10% of the submissions will fail for whatever reason, resubmit an identical job and it's fine.

Will try and make some repros, but it all feels worryingly delicate atm.

It might be worthwhile to log a support ticket with whatever log files and hip file you can scrape together so we can try to reproduce the problem.

@chrisgreb thanks for the sample is it possible to mix your example with services?

Ok my bad, it is properly using services but I meant the same "single process" as on the Karma LOP...
I'm basically making an USD asset "thumbnailer", in a ROP USD I import each asset from upper worker items, apply lookdev / cameras based on bounding box and render settings. Then a USD Render node, but it's very very slow (compared to just switching the USD's in LOP only). Unfortunately I could not make Karma work when using variable "filepath" for each assets, hence went the TOP way, but it's taking like x100 the time compared to the single process/LOP version...

I wonder how to overcome that, either in TOP on in LOP

Akelian
I'm basically making an USD asset "thumbnailer", in a ROP USD I import each asset from upper worker items, apply lookdev / cameras based on bounding box and render settings.

Hey there,
I am in the situation of having to do pretty much what you described (big asset library as input and the task of rendering a thumbnail for each object while automatically setting the camera/ lights in accordance with the object's size ect.)
Since I'm a tad stuck due to noobness, I was wondering if you have a .hip to share to point me in the direction. Very much appreciated if you do!

Regarding the problem you described with the @filepath attribute, I stumbled across something seemingly similar yesterday in TOPs: in my case it was the @filename attribute that caused problems. After a frustrating day I finally figured out that one of the HDA processors coincidentally had a parameter of the same name (from a attribfrommap node) exposed. This was causing problems down the PDG network and it was fixed by just renaming the exposed parameter. Not sure if this has anything to do with your issue, I was just reminden when I read your post.

All the best and thanks for your help!
Felix

Hello,
I'm aslo need to render LOP in TOPs, as I have 10 camera, but it's render only I camera, and for other work items it give and error:
WARNING: Work item lists file 'R:/****/Render/Test_02/CAM_ID_03/Test_02.CAM_ID_03.exr' as an expected output file, but it wasn't found when the item cooked