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> Forum Home > Feature Requests > Render .HIP files directly with smedge?

	Mon, 21/Apr/2014 6:51 AM
Nikolay 11 Posts	Hello, We are currently exporting the ifd's with batch script by multiple machines and then load them in to smedge for rendering, that's working relatively good for most of the situations. But one of the problems we have is that our renderfarm is based on workstations only and for the creation of the ifd sequences we are using the same nodes that the smedge is using for rendering images and when we have a ready .hip file for exporting to ifd's we have to shutdown all jobs on smedge to ensure that the nodes are having enough free resources and when the ifd creation completes we are putting the smedge schedule back to work. We have made a simple batch script to distribute the making of .ifd files using the houdini's hbatch command line tool which saves time but still the whole workflow sucks a bit because by this way there are 2 "renderfarm distributors" on the same render farm that are not communicating with each other. In short it will be great to be able to distribute .HIP files with smedge for creating .ifd sequences, this way we can add a second job that's dependent to the ifd's creation job and the rendering of the scene will be fully automated. This way a geometry ROP's can be distributed as well to write .bgeo files of all ready cached simulations or other surface generation. Additionally will be very nice to be able to distribute .HIP files directly with Smedge for final image rendering without exporting ifd files. for some situations this is way better and cheaper. It will be great if all this can be made trough Smedge GUI like the current Houdini job submitter, just needs additional field to type in the node you want to be rendered out (/out/mantra1 for direct rendering of images or ifd's) or (/obj/geo/rop_geometry1 for generating .bgeo sequence for later use) Thanks in advance! Edited by author on Mon, 21/Apr/2014 6:54 AM
	Mon, 21/Apr/2014 12:22 PM
Robin 1138 Posts	Hi You can currently do this in Smedge in several ways. One way is to set up an export job using the Generic Script module, and then have the render job depend on that export job. (You could also set up a virtual module for the export job once you have a working Generic Script solution.) Another way to do it would be to set up a script that exported then rendered the frames, and then either adjusting the Houdini product executable to call your script or using Generic Script/Virtual Module to run your custom script that way. I am happy to discuss more details about your specific scenario if you contact me directly at . If it seems like a generic enough process I can add the functionality to the general release as well. Thanks -robin

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