I need to do several interior renders, and would like to render using DR to speed up renderings. So it is single frame but distributed over 3 machines.

Few questions:
1. Is it possible to do that (using -H option) with Escape license on one machine, or on every machine I need to have licensed Houdini?
2. Is it possible to do DR with hqueue?

SreckoM
Few questions:
1. Is it possible to do that (using -H option) with Escape license on one machine, or on every machine I need to have licensed Houdini?

Afaik you just need to install Houdini remotely and have more than one Mantra license.

2. Is it possible to do DR with hqueue?

I have currently hard time with HQueue without much experience, but it looks like it supports distributed rendering. What else means “Min/max Client per Frame” option on Mantra Options Tab in Hqueue Rop…

Thanks!
Well I will have to deal with hqueue than. Had also really bad experience with it, so I wanted to avoid doing anything with it…

Cgru can split rendering but unfortunately with a minimum of 2 x 2. So 4 pieces to render.
It's free. It's a very good render manager with a launch node directly in houdini.
There is an example file in the installation.
You can find it here cgru.info

Hello!

SreckoM
Few questions:
1. Is it possible to do that (using -H option) with Escape license on one machine, or on every machine I need to have licensed Houdini?

Yes. This is possible.

The Mantra ROP has options for dividing up images into tiles (Properties -> Output -> Tiled Render). You could generate an IFD for each tile and distribute the IFD renders across your 3 machines. That way your render machines will only use Mantra license/tokens.

SreckoM
2. Is it possible to do DR with hqueue?

Yes.

For your case, you need to turn on Tiled Rendering in the Mantra ROP and set how many tiles are in the image. HQueue will create render jobs for the tiles and distribute them across your farm. It will also stitch the tiles together into your final image.

Cheers,
Rob

Hqueue is awesome, works brilliantly. It took me a whole to learn and install, had a lot of help from Mr Vinluan, ( many thanks sir) but DR of sims, fluids, mantra renders is very cool when all set up and running.

Neil78
Hqueue is awesome, works brilliantly. It took me a whole to learn and install, had a lot of help from Mr Vinluan, ( many thanks sir) but DR of sims, fluids, mantra renders is very cool when all set up and running.

My main problem was with hqueue that if the process ran by the client crashed, it took down the client with it. And that's a really bad thing, basic no-no for a DR app. I wonder if they fixed that?

I have problems with textures now. I setup everything with UNC paths or mapped letters (two machines with Win OS) and still clients are not grabbing textures correctly… I am using -H option, not hqueue, yet …

Not sure for Windows but OsX works for -H as long as the drive is mounted

SreckoM
I have problems with textures now. I setup everything with UNC paths or mapped letters (two machines with Win OS) and still clients are not grabbing textures correctly… I am using -H option, not hqueue, yet …

When you're using the mantra -H option on Windows, mantra is run under the user account that the “HoudiniServer” (hserver.exe) service is set up under. You can inspect this in its service properties by running the command services.msc. The default is to run under the Local System account which I believe presents “anonymous credentials” when connecting to network shares.

So unless your network shares has public read access, Windows will likely deny it. I think people usually just run the HoudiniServer under a different user that has access to the network share in question. Sometimes, they create a specific user account just for this purpose.