Best Render Engines for Houdini 2022

Houdini is a powerful amazing software. Developed by SideFX, it is designed for artists for modeling, rigging, animation, VFX, look development, lighting and rendering in film, TV, advertising and video games, etc. While Houdini comes with the Mantra and Karma renderers, there are many 3rd party rendering solutions available that integrate nicely. Find out today with iRender what are the Best Render Engines for Houdini 2022.

Particle Plant by Hauzhen Yen

Source: RenderMan

RenderMan is one of the best render engines for Houdini. This software is a versatile renderer. With a new state-of-the-art framework optimized for physically-based rendering, RenderMan can give the best flexibility for any production workflow. Not only is RenderMan used for Pixar’s own feature films, but it is also used throughout the industry for rendering Visual Effects and animation, making scalability and versatility one of its core strengths.

Moreover, RenderMan ships with the latest open-source tools and comprehensive APIs so you can develop complex collaborative environments, for maximum pipeline flexibility. With its Bridge Tools, RenderMan now supports more 3D applications than ever before: Houdini, Maya, Katana, Blender.

• OS: Windows, MacOS, Linux.
• CPU: a processor with AVX capabilities.
• GPU: an Nvidia graphics card of Maxwell architecture or above.
• Memory: a minimum of 4GB of RAM and a minimum of 11GB of VRAM (for XPU). Maximum RAM depends on scene complexity.

$595/license

Source: Autodesk

Arnold is an advanced Monte Carlo ray tracing renderer that helps you deliver beautiful and predictable results, for the demands of feature-length animation and visual effects. With a robust set of tools (powerful shaders, operators, textures, and utilities), artists are able to manage even complex projects and deliver stunning photoreal or stylized results in fewer clicks.

Also, Arnold is easily integrated with all the top 3D digital content creation tools, such as Houdini, Maya, 3ds Max, Cinema 4D, Katana.

• OS: Windows, MacOS, Linux.
• CPU: need to support the SSE4.1 instruction set. Apple Mac models with M series chips are supported under Rosetta 2 mode.
• GPU: Windows and Linux only and requires an NVIDIA GPU of the Ampere, Turing, Volta, Pascal, or Maxwell architecture. An NVidia GPU with CUDA™ Compute Capability 5.0 and above is needed for Optix™ denoiser.

$1,085/3 years – $380/year – $50/month

Redshift is a powerful GPU-accelerated renderer, which is designed to help creative individuals and studios of all sizes to meet today’s high-end production rendering requirements. It offers a broad range of powerful features and integrates with industry-standard CG applications. That is Houdini, Maya, 3ds Max, Blender, Cinema 4D, Katana.

More surprisingly, Redshift has the features and uncompromising quality of a CPU renderer, but at GPU rendering speeds. It is a biased renderer that allows the user to adjust the quality of individual techniques in order to get the best performance/quality balance for their production.

OS: Windows, MacOS, Linux.

Recommended Requirements

• 16GB RAM or more.
• Core i7 or Xeon equivalent, 3.0GHz or higher.
• For Windows and Linux: NVIDIA GPU with CUDA compute capability 7.0 or higher and 10 GB of VRAM or more. NVIDIA Quadro, Titan or GeForce RTX GPU are recommended for hardware-accelerated ray tracing.
• For macOS: “Navi” or “Vega” AMD GPU or later and 8 GB VRAM or more.
• Multiple GPUs.

EUR 274.29/year – EUR 46.74/month

iRender supports Houdini in any version, with any renderers and plugins. Including RenderMan, Arnold and Redshift which are introduced above. How can we do that? That’s because we provide high computing performance on the model of IaaS (Infrastructure-as-a-Service), you – our users will take full control of the whole render process, just like your personal computer.

With Powerful Render Nodes: 1/2/4/6/8x RTX 3090 for both Single-GPU and Multi-GPU Rendering, you can easily choose one suitable package for your project demands to speed up the rendering process many times.

High-end configuration: NVIDIA RTX 3090 and AMD Ryzen Threadripper Pro 3955WX @ 3.90GHz, and with reasonable price. However, we are more than that. With a variety of useful features (Fixed Rental, Clone, NV Link, APIs, Process monitoring, etc) and dedicated support from our team, we want to bring to you not only the best quality products but also the most comfortable render time and experience.

So, hesitate no more, let’s REGISTER for an account today to get a FREE COUPON to experience our service and reach a new level of cloud rendering. 20% BONUS for all new users, CHECK IT OUT!

Thank you & Happy Rendering!

Reference source: RenderMan, Arnold, Redshift