HtoA Loading AWS SpotFleet Linux Instance

JakeS · September 17, 2019, 8:55pm

Hello,
I’ve been able to launch Houdini Jobs via an AWS custom instance and am attempting to render an HtoA job within Houdini using UBL.
I’m having trouble getting our Houdini to load Arnold using the Houdini.env on our instance.

I know this is probably more of a solidangle/deadline issue, but I’m hoping to get help wherever I can get it ;).

/home/ec2-user/houdin17.5/houdini.env
reads as below:
HOUDINI_PATH=/home/ec2-user/htoa-4.1.1_rf2c4e45_houdini-17.5.293;&

My htoa install path is here:
/home/ec2-user/htoa-4.1.1_rf2c4e45_houdini-17.5.293

However doesn’t seem like it’s getting loaded when the deadline slave launches on the spotfleet instance:

Warning: Bad node type found: arnold_vopnet in /shop.
2019-09-17 17:33:48: 0: STDOUT: Missing the parent of a node on load: obj/arnold_skydome_light1/shopnet/arnold_vopnet.
2019-09-17 17:33:48: 0: STDOUT: The following node types are using incomplete asset definitions:
2019-09-17 17:33:48: 0: STDOUT: Driver/deadline
2019-09-17 17:33:48: 0: STDOUT: Object/arnold_light
2019-09-17 17:33:48: 0: STDOUT: Driver/arnold
2019-09-17 17:33:48: 0: STDOUT: ROP type: arnold
2019-09-17 17:33:48: 0: STDOUT: Enabled log to console
2019-09-17 17:33:48: 0: STDOUT: Set verbosity to detailed
2019-09-17 17:33:48: 0: STDOUT: Rendering frame 2
2019-09-17 17:33:48: 0: STDOUT: Error: Caught exception: [’ File “/opt/hfs17.5.293/houdini/python2.7libs/hou.py”, line 51187, in render\n return _hou.RopNode_render(*args, **kwargs)\n’, ‘OperationFailed: The attempted operation failed.\nError: No command specified for rendering\n Unable to evaluate expression (\nTraceback (most recent call last):\n File “<stdin>”, line 2, in expression\nImportError: No module named htoa.searchpath\n (/out/arnold1/soho_pipecmd)).\n’]

Thanks,
-Jake

anthonygelatka · September 18, 2019, 9:27am

I have a similar issue with houdini and other renderers. I’m wondering if you need to set the envs for any app via deadline rather than houdini.env

JakeS · September 19, 2019, 4:13pm

Hi Anthony,
In this particular case I was able to solve the issue by moving the htoa install to the “opt” folder on the linux image. I’m not all that familiar with linux, but I believe it has something to do with permissions.
FYI…if you haven’t already tried, running
hconfig -a
will give you a list of Houdini related env vars and tell you if at least the “HOUDINI_PATH” has been assigned to the string defined in your houdin.env.
Thanks,
-Jake