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Hi everyone!
We are testing Octane for Houdini and so far it seems really fast and stable for some of our projects. We would like to adopt it, however, i'm having a really hard time understanding the best method to network render with it, since it's essential for us and for the work volume we have.
We use Houdini + Deadline with other renderers and there's documentation and scripts to facilitate some things, and overall everything works fine. But for Octane I pretty much find no info on what's the best way to do it.
- There's no official docs on working with Deadline, or any other local render manager.
- The latest Deadline has Octane 2019 as the latest plugin. (we're on 2024...)
- The included submission scripts have the other renderers supported, but not Octane.
- Only thing i managed is to calculate the orbx locally and manually submit on the deadline monitor but i lose all the houdini info and parms for the job.

So my question is, aren't studios or freelancers using network rendering with Houdini + Octane? Just doing it locally? Or am I missing something completely here on how to deal with this?

Octane is really really stable and fast right now in Houdini, and it's a shame if this network rendering issue would be the bottleneck and deal breaker for us.

Hi there,

Deadline isn't something we support, but I will try get some info on the process for you from other users that may be using it.

Have you tried using: https://rendernetwork.com/ ?

Ricky

Having some insights on how others are using it would be great.

We don't want to rely on cloud computing due to the costs and high data amount involved.

mori44h wrote:Hi everyone!
We are testing Octane for Houdini and so far it seems really fast and stable for some of our projects. We would like to adopt it, however, i'm having a really hard time understanding the best method to network render with it, since it's essential for us and for the work volume we have.
We use Houdini + Deadline with other renderers and there's documentation and scripts to facilitate some things, and overall everything works fine. But for Octane I pretty much find no info on what's the best way to do it.
- There's no official docs on working with Deadline, or any other local render manager.
- The latest Deadline has Octane 2019 as the latest plugin. (we're on 2024...)
- The included submission scripts have the other renderers supported, but not Octane.
- Only thing i managed is to calculate the orbx locally and manually submit on the deadline monitor but i lose all the houdini info and parms for the job.

So my question is, aren't studios or freelancers using network rendering with Houdini + Octane? Just doing it locally? Or am I missing something completely here on how to deal with this?

Octane is really really stable and fast right now in Houdini, and it's a shame if this network rendering issue would be the bottleneck and deal breaker for us.

Using Houdini + Octane + Deadline for months now with the default Houdini Deadline submission script. Just install the Houdini submission script from the Deadline repo, submit your scene to deadline from the Render menu and choose the Octane ROP that's in your "out" context. It works with any ROP, btw, be it simulation or render. Also make sure that the render nodes are running a full Houdini license and each has an Octane plugin license (each machine Octane plugin inside Houdini must be logged in with an otoy account credentials).

Appreciate the answer @ghost3d . We use Houdini FX, so having a full license just for rendering Octane is out of the question. Is houdini engine enough for octane to open the hip file and render?
I tried the default submitter but it gave a lot of errors on the network. I'll try again though, must have done something wrong.

mori44h wrote:Appreciate the answer @ghost3d . We use Houdini FX, so having a full license just for rendering Octane is out of the question. Is houdini engine enough for octane to open the hip file and render?
I tried the default submitter but it gave a lot of errors on the network. I'll try again though, must have done something wrong.

I never tried Houdini engine in this configuration, but you have to try it. Post the error log here, usually the first renders generate a lot of errors.

mori44h wrote: Sun Feb 02, 2025 12:37 pm Appreciate the answer @ghost3d . We use Houdini FX, so having a full license just for rendering Octane is out of the question. Is houdini engine enough for octane to open the hip file and render?
I tried the default submitter but it gave a lot of errors on the network. I'll try again though, must have done something wrong.

It is. If you want Deadline support for directly rendering ORBX files you'll need to reach out to Deadline/AWS (Wouldn't hold your breath on that nor plan your pipeline around it, because orbx is a very poor format for a bunch of typical Houdini things, especially FX).

Is there any progress on this topic?
I think octane 2024 worked well with deadline, but sadly 2025 is broken.
Would be great if this can be updated.

What is not working regarding Octane and Deadline?

Here is working fine with 2 workstations.


Best,
Cosmin

Hey! Which version are you using? The latest octane?