Author: Kalista Kontogiannis

Hopefully by this point you are ready to begin rendering out your work in Houdini. Unlike Maya, to submit a Houdini job with the render farm you may do it from Houdini itself, rather than using Deadline Monitor 10. This is preferable, as it will store your deadline configuration settings in the HIP file which will allow you to reuse these settings. 

To begin, make sure you have followed the previous pages document titled, ‘Setting up the Render Output’, for help with setting up your Houdini scene including information regarding lighting and materials.  

Once you have completed this go, to the ‘Output’ section in Houdini and press tab to open the node editor. Type in ‘Arnold’ and select the Arnold node. The first setting we are going to adjust in the Arnold node editor is the frame range. Make sure the frames you would like to render are set up in the timeline before selecting the ‘render frame range’ option.  

Make sure you select the correct camera you would like to render out. Another thing to remember is that changing the camera settings is not done in the Arnold render output settings but rather the camera node itself. Make sure you have adjusted the camera’s resolution from the default before you begin rendering out your scene.  

Select ‘Properties’ and in the output tab open the drop-down menu and select whichever sequence of
file types you would like to render out. Change the image format so that it corresponds to the
selected image sequence settings.

For a higher quality render, select the ‘sampling’ tab and adjust the number of samples. The higher
number of samples the better, but keep in mind that this will increase render times.

Now that you have set up the Arnold render settings you can go ahead and press tab and search up
‘Deadline’. Create the deadline node and link the Arnold node to the Deadline node.

Now we can go ahead and adjust the deadline render settings. Adjust the ‘valid frame range’ first
making sure it matches the Arnold settings’ ‘Render Frame Range’ option.

In job options make sure you change the ‘pool’ to ‘ba-hons-animation-full-time’.

Once you have completed all these steps you can go ahead and select ‘Submit To Deadline’.

Open Deadline Monitor 10 and you will be able to see your submitted render job.

If you are setting up your scene for the render farm and are using Arnold to render, it is necessary to ensure you have used the correct lighting and materials or your work may appear different or not show at all when rendered.  

Texturing with Arnold 

To texture an asset or simulation in Houdini with Arnold you must first go to the network menu and select ‘Mat’. Press tab and create an ‘Arnold Material Builder’ node.  

Double click on the material builder node to open it up, before pressing tab and creating a ‘standard surface’ node.  

Once you have done this, select the three lines on the bottom of the standard surface node to open it up and connect the shader to the surface in the ‘Out_material’.  

Once you have done this you can go ahead and adjust the standard surface settings, whether that be; colour, metalness roughness and or opacity. Or you can create an ‘image’ node where you would import a file and connect the rgba to the corresponding attribute. For example you could import a colour map which you would connect to the base_colour in the standard_surface node. 

To apply the Arnold standard surface to your asset, simply locate and select the main geometry node which you would like to texture. In the attribute editor viewport above you select ‘render’ located next to the transform menu. Then select the tool on the far right of the material box which will open up the material options and you can select the Arnold standard surface you created and apply it.  

Lighting with Arnold 

Similarly, if you would like to render using Arnold you will also need to use Arnold lights. To view all the Arnold light options, you can open up the Arnold shelf if it isn’t already appearing in Houdini.  

Select a light from the Arnold shelf and drop it into the scene and adjust the settings.  

When beginning a new project in Houdini it is important to make sure you create a new project folder and set the project. Creating and setting up projects in Houdini is crucial to keep all files, assets, and resources organised, collaborate efficiently, and streamline the rendering process. 

Once you have launched Houdini, go to file then New Project.

Change the Project name and Project Path. This will ensure your rendered images will appear in the project folder you have set up as well as ensure Houdini is able to read any textures you have input if you are using the Render farm, so long as you are saving those textures into this project folder you have just created. You should be saving your work and setting the project to your specific account folder in Elements.

Finally, make sure you go back to file and set the project to the folder you just created in its correct location.

It is important to know that to launch and use Houdini you must open it through the desktop icon, if you do not launch it this way, Arnold and Deadline for Houdini may not work which will prevent you from being able to submit your work to the render farm. It may take a few minutes to launch.