These two ROP are created for CGRU's AFANASY, the free render farm manager.
The official CGRU's AFANASY provides an "afanasy ROP" which can achieve the following result.
BUT our "FX Render ROP" comes with the "FX Wedge ROP", witch provide the same result as the Houdini's official "wedge ROP" and even MORE.
"FX Render ROP" is a handy connection tool between render farm and user. The main idea is that artist and user can build the job graph with the dependency, the same logic with Houdini's node graph.
This picture represent the example of the job dependency. The 3 orange nodes stands for the "geometry ROP" and 2 greens as "mantra ifd ROP". Each node will wait for input node(s) and start. From this graph, "mantra1" will wait for "SIM_B_0" and "SIM_B_1". Thus, both "SIM_B_*" will wait for "SIM_A". "mantra2" will wait for "SIM_B_1" only.
For example. "Main PYRO Sim" -> "Upres PYRO" + "Advected Particle Sim" -> "Render".
This picture shows the dashboard of the "FX Render ROP" with the previous graph. This is useful for artist to submit the different package of job such as, "Full graph", "Geometry or IFD only", or each single node. Also, artist can select the pool/stations of the render farm. Many detail manual setting for artist can adjusting.
The BEST part of this "FX Render ROP" is that it supports the "FX Wedge ROP" which is not supported by original CGRU provided OTL. This is quite useful for artist especially Effect team. Once you need to submit the cluster simulation or mass particle simulation with randomize seed.
See the article of the official document of the "wedge ROP" for more about wedge and official document
of the "cluster simulation" for more about cluster simulation.
This graph shows the way to setup the "FX Wedge ROP". "SIM_B_1" will be submit as wedge from "FX Wedge1" with the following setting.
From this dashboard, "SIM_B_1" will duplicated 8 times with random value applied to the specified parameters. Also, user can switch to Uniform with the ascending result of integers, whitch is usefull for cluster simulation. Same, "FX_Wedge2" stands for the wedge setting of the "mantra1".
Artist can load the wedged output back to Houdini by using "FX Multi-delayed Load OBJ".