From Odwiki

Contents 1 Installation of PrMan 1.1 Setting up the PrMan environment to work with Houdini 1.2 Adding Shaders to Houdini - not using VOPS 1.2.1 Legacy 1.3 Setup FAQ 1.3.1 Q: When previewing shaders, Houdini tells me it cannot connect to Renderman 1.3.2 Q: How do I get Renderman to render directly to MPlay? I hate this basic ip window. 1.3.3 Q: Houdini can't find my shaders 1.3.4 Q: The shaders show up in SHOPs, but RenderMan can't find them

[edit] Installation of PrMan

Follow the directions supplied by Pixar.

[edit] Setting up the PrMan environment to work with Houdini

You must ensure that the PrMan executables (render.exe/prman.exe/slc.exe) are all in the $PATH and so when Houdini executes, it can find these programs. There are a host of additional variables and settings that you can tweak (in the prman.ini), especially important if you're doing more than a single-user setup to modify search paths for things like shader code, textures, license servers, DisplayDrivers, and so on. However you probably don't need to set up very much to get PrMan just running; these are advanced settings that can streamline your setup. For more information, refer to the PrMan documentation.

Please read more about setting up Houdini's side in CustomizingHoudini.

[edit] Adding Shaders to Houdini - not using VOPS

If you want to compile shaders from a file (creating an .slo from .sl, using slc) instead of building a shader with VOPS (Houdini's node based UI shader builder), you'll have to place the compiled .slo in renderman shader path and create an OTL which is read by Houdini which defines it's shader parameters in the Houdini UI.

Houdini 9+ is shipped with slo2otl.py, a program which will read the definition of a compiled RenderMan shader (.slo) and create an OTL for the shader.

[edit] Legacy

• Houdini 8 was shipped with a program called rmands to create a older-style DialogueScript for the shader.. Optionally, it will also create an OTL. Running rmands on your own shader will create a Houdini SHOP which has all the parameters for the shader defined. When you start Houdini, you should see a new SHOP with your shader.
• Houdini 6: There are two methods of installing SHOPs. It's possible to install new operators using IndexFiles, or the preferred (new) method is to generate OTLs.

[edit] Setup FAQ

[edit] Q: When previewing shaders, Houdini tells me it cannot connect to Renderman

• See: "How do I get Renderman to render directly to MPlay?" below.

[edit] Q: How do I get Renderman to render directly to MPlay? I hate this basic ip window.

• First ensure PrMan is in your path, and secondly be sure that you have run proto_install from the shell (see CommandlineTools) and installed RManDisplay. This will modify your renderman.ini file and tell it to use Houdini as a display device.

[edit] Q: Houdini can't find my shaders

• Make sure you have generated .otls or .ds files (with rmands) from your compiled shaders and these appear in an OPlibraries or SHOPsurface/etc file respectively.
• You can also check your HOUDINI_RI_SHADERPATH environment variable or your shaderpath setting in your prman.ini. Please note that you don't have to worry about these in simple single-user setups.

[edit] Q: The shaders show up in SHOPs, but RenderMan can't find them

• It seems as if Houdini is correctly loading your .otl or .ds files, but Renderman doesn't know where to load the .slo from. This information can either be sent to PrMan in the RIB by Houdini by way of the HOUDINI_RI_SHADERPATH setting, or PrMan can be taught to look in preset places using the prman.ini settings file. Make sure your shader .slo files are in a location pointed to by the environment variable HOUDINI_RI_SHADERPATH or the prman.ini file.