Houdini and Karma XPU - HUSK
As of Houdini 20.5, husk no longer pays attention to the render delegate from the render settings primitive. You must specify on the command line to husk:
-R BRAY_HdKarmaXPU
Until ... Houdini 22 (tested 22.0.368) - from the release notes: "A new husk:default_delegate schema provides information about the currently used renderer. This is important for render managers." So now it WILL grab the information and put the following line into your usd file:
string husk:default_delegate = "BRAY_HdKarmaXPU"
The override engine flags still work.
If you select "gpu" when submitting on the farm it will add the appropriate flag (tested 3/9/2026)
You can also command line render locally using husk -R BRAY_HdKarmaXPU or --engine xpu
To render locally to test a frame use command line render to ensure your usd file is working before waiting in queue on the farm.
Behavior in 21: If you are working in GUI things will be rendering in xpu but husk renders will not without the above flags, despite your settings.
Behavior in 22: the default schema will be specified in your USD file.