TOPs is an incredibly powerful system within Houdini to automate things, especially if you want to manage multiple outputs or variations.

When it comes to Octane we can use it for things like:

• Manage rendering multiple ROPs in one scene
• Have some level of built in error handing or resuming partial batches (has some caveats though)
• Manage rendering multiple ROPs in different Houdini files (custom local render manager)
• Render different wedges/variations of a scene
• Automate export of individual ORBX files for individual scene items
• And much more…

Table of Contents

Before We Start

Before we get started it would probably help if you had some basic understanding of TOPs. Here some resources that might be helpful:

Basic TOPs wedging intro: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3cXjVfamOZ8 Houdini TOPs masterclass: https://youtu.be/lxAHx4JNcp8?si=0A85qtnl4XUIwsgl Houdini TOPs documentation: https://www.sidefx.com/docs/houdini/tops/intro.html

Example Files

You can find a zip with example files here: TOPs Example Files

Alrighty lets get started:

1. General Setup

→ How to setup TOPs to manage a render in your existing scene using the ROP fetch node.