H20.0.688 / HtoA 6.3.1.1 - Failing to generate .ass from Houdini rop on Deadline

[apps88EMR]

When we try to use HtoA for .688 in our usual setup, with vanilla arnold nodes in a new clean scene, we get this error when trying to generate .ass:

FailRenderException : Error: module 'htoa.imager' has no attribute 'ropImagerPresetMenu'

Any suggestions? Log and hip file are attached. 

Thanks!

[Stephen.Blair · Accepted solution]

That kind of error is almost aways an environment or setup problem.

In this case, I see

loading plugins from /mnt/Apps/htoa-6.2.4.2_r323c0ca_houdini-20.0.506/dso/../scripts/bin/../plugins ...

and then

libai.so already loaded
2024-06-04 18:26:27:  0: STDOUT: [htoa] HTOA environment variable already set to /mnt/Apps/htoa-6.3.1.1_r6f505f8_houdini-20.0.688
2024-06-04 18:26:28:  0: STDOUT: [htoa] HTOA environment variable already set to /mnt/Apps/htoa-6.3.1.1_r6f505f8_houdini-20.0.688

So it looks like the wrong HtoA for the installed Houdini version.

[apps88EMR]

Good catch Stephen, we'll confirm our environment. 

[apps88EMR]

So here's the weird part - this is the environment for the job on the farm:

PATH
/mnt/Apps/htoa-6.3.1.1_r6f505f8_houdini-20.0.688/scripts/bin:/mnt/Apps/hfs20.0.688/python/bin:/mnt/Apps/hfs20.0.688/bin:/mnt/Apps/hfs20.0.688/houdini/sbin:/usr/lib64/qt-3.3/bin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/bin:/sbin:/usr/local/sbin:/usr/sbin:/opt/rv-centos7-x86-64-7.9.0/bin:/usr/local/Nuke12.2v3:/opt/hfs18.5/bin:/opt/rv-centos7-x86-64-7.9.0/bin:/usr/local/Nuke12.2v3:/opt/hfs18.5/bin:/Volumes/user/laurence/.local/bin:/Volumes/user/laurence/bin:/bin:/usr/bin

PXR_PLUGINPATH_NAME
/mnt/Apps/htoa-6.3.1.1_r6f505f8_houdini-20.0.688/dso/usd_plugins

HTOA
/mnt/Apps/htoa-6.3.1.1_r6f505f8_houdini-20.0.688

HTOA_PLUGIN_PATH
/mnt/Apps/htoa-6.3.1.1_r6f505f8_houdini-20.0.688/scripts/plugins:/mnt/Apps/htoa-6.2.4.2_r323c0ca_houdini-20.0.506/scripts/plugins

You can see the errant plugin folder in HTOA_PLUGIN_PATH.  I searched our entire codebase, and no where do we set HTOA_PLUGIN_PATH.

Any clue how that is getting set? 

Thanks!

[apps88EMR]

Ah it might be we are running the wrong Houdini on the farm. Stay tuned. 

[apps88EMR]

Yup that was it. Deadline by default doesn't have executable paths for 0.0.X versions - we were using the wrong executable path.