How we built the ultimate Houdini render farm
We built our Cinema 4D and Blender render farm integrations to feel as close to native as possible, and the same is true for our brand new Houdini plugin. We worked in close collaboration with SideFX, the makers of Houdini, and Tim van Helsdingen, a Houdini expert with 10 years of experience in both teaching and freelance work. You can watch the talk he held announcing our collaboration here:
We've gone through many iterations to create a workflow that is unparalelled in both its simplicity and the amount of control you have over your job. Combined with our top-of-the-line fleet of machines and our class leading render farm architecture we believe we created the Houdini render farm for You.
A Houdini renderfarm that adapts to your workflow
Many Houdini render farm plugins feel like they have taken a system designed for another application and slightly adapted it to work in Houdini. Our plugin is different - we built it from the ground-up to be a native-like experience, where the entire server connection is handled through a single Houdini node.
You can use our plugin for any workflow - and if your workflow isn't supported yet, get in contact and we'll do our best to get it working. The system will render everything that is connected to our Drop & Render node.
- For example, to render an entire project you can simply hook up the output node to ours:
- You can render a subset of the project just by connecting our node further up the chain. You can even render individual file caches - practically any Houdini node will just work:
And the best part? All of the outputs will be downloaded with the same structure as if you rendered them locally! This means that you can render heavier dependencies and still do the final steps locally, or iterate many times on a smaller subset and submit the final, heavier render once you're satisfied.
Our plugin adapts to how you work, not the other way around.
Getting started
Create a studio account
A studio account lets you manage your renders, view your job history and purchase render credits. You can also create multiple users to connect your whole office to the render farm!
Simply go to our website and follow the steps. We will give you 10€ free credits to get you started!
Install the Cloud Manager
Connect to Drop & Render! We developed our Cloud Manager application to let you easily manage all your ongoing renders, your deadlines and even the users within your team.
Choose the button for your operating system below to get started. We support Windows 8 or higher and and MacOS 10.15 or higher.
Log into the Cloud Manager
Look for the application:
- Windows: 'Drop and Render User Interface'
- MacOS: 'cloudui' (accessible under 'Applications' > 'DropandRender')
Authenticate your studio account by filling in the correct login details.
Install our plugin
The Cloud Manager will now ask you to install our plugin. This software will form a bridge between your machine and our servers, seamlessly transferring your entire project with no manual action.
Submit your first job
Once the plugin is loaded you can simply open up any Houdini project and drop our node at the end of a chain. Our node can currently be used in ROP, LOP and SOP networks, with TOP (and PDG) support coming soon!
Once you attach the node you can open the Scene Check Panel. This will let you first make sure your project is configured correctly for our farm (resolving things like missing files, unsaved changes and more), then simply press the "Submit Job" button and let our farm do the rest!
Your outputs will be downloaded exactly as if you did the render locally.
Our scene check system
When your nodes are connected, the Pre-Flight Panel is where you finalize everything before sending a job to the farm.
Click Check Scene to scan your project – this will find missing caches, broken paths, and other issues.
Warnings and errors are clearly listed, so you can fix problems locally or let the farm handle them. You can override frame ranges, adjust job priority, and review dependencies so caches render first. You can even flag large caches to stay on the farm, so you save both download time and bandwidth!
In the Assets Tab, you can review all files that will be uploaded.
Already-uploaded assets are skipped automatically, speeding up submissions. You can manually add any missing files if something wasn’t detected.
Once everything looks good, hit Submit to send the jobs to the farm. You can then monitor progress, view logs, and preview frames directly from the Cloud Manager or web dashboard.
Your files sync back to your workstation automatically when complete. This process ensures a smooth, error-free render every time without leaving Houdini.
Why use a render farm?
- Get more done in the same time
It's common to have your workstation unresponsive while rendering jobs. Our Houdini render farm lets you keep working while your projects are getting processed, so you can get more value for your time. This is especially good if you are a freelancer, because you can render out a client's job while working on the next one.
- No need to maintain architecture
We maintain our server farms for your use, so you don't have to deal with any of it yourself. No need for expensive hardware, regular hours working on networking or even setting up new machines.
We don't even charge for it! All you pay for is the time your render took.
- Adaptive workflow
Unlike other solutions, our plugin will work with your current system. You can open a project, drop our node and render with full confidence, knowing it will come out perfectly with no modification.
- Quick, dedicated support
Something doesn't work? Our team will is always eager to help you. We want to build the best possible systems for your work, so you can get direct contact with our developers to iron out any bugs. Does the system not match your expectations? Tell us about it, and we will try to make it work for You.
Conclusion
We have built the ultimate Houdini render farm for You. Our collaborations with SideFX and experts have shaped the tool into the ideal workflow for all Houdini projects. We are eager to adapt and improve it as time goes on, so feel free to contact us with any thoughts and concerns you might have.
Happy rendering!
