Installation¶

TumblePipe runs on Windows, Linux, and macOS, but several pipeline tools (the render-farm submission scripts in particular) expect a Linux-like environment. On Windows, we provide that via WSL2.

Prerequisites¶

WSL2 and Ubuntu (Windows only)¶

TumblePipe’s farm scripts run in a Linux environment. On Windows this is provided by WSL2.

Install WSL2 following Microsoft’s official guide. The default Ubuntu distribution works well.
This applies to both artist workstations and render farm workers.

Required Linux tools¶

Install these on Ubuntu / WSL2:

# Astral UV — Python environment management for farm scripts
curl -LsSf https://astral.sh/uv/install.sh | sh

# Image and video tools used by render processing
sudo apt install ffmpeg openimageio-tools opencolorio-tools

See the UV installation guide for alternative install methods.

Drive mapping¶

Windows project drives must be accessible from WSL2 using the same mount points as the Windows side. Edit /etc/fstab in Ubuntu:

P: /mnt/p drvfs defaults 0 0

The mounts must match what your launcher scripts reference in TH_PROJECT_PATH and TH_PIPELINE_PATH. This is critical on render farm workers — without matching drive paths, workers cannot read project files.

Installing TumblePipe¶

There are three supported install paths. Pick the one that fits your workflow.

TumbleTrove Desktop (recommended)¶

The TumbleTrove Desktop app lets you browse, install, and update Houdini packages — including TumblePipe — through a graphical interface. No command line required.

HPM (command line)¶

HPM is the Houdini Package Manager.

hpm add tumblepipe --git https://github.com/tumblehead/TumblePipe

Manual install¶

Zipped archives per release are available on the GitHub releases page. Extract the archive and register the package with Houdini via a package JSON or launcher script (see below).

Making Houdini aware of TumblePipe¶

Where you place the package depends on your setup:

Individuals — place it alongside your other Houdini packages, in your Houdini preferences directory, or bundle it per project.
Teams — place it on a shared file server, or install locally per workstation.

If you installed via TumbleTrove Desktop, click Configure on the TumblePipe package card to launch the project setup wizard — it points the package at an existing project on disk or scaffolds a new one from the bundled template. See Project setup wizard.

For HPM or manual installs, the simplest activation path is a launcher script (for example a .bat file on Windows) that sets the required environment variables and launches Houdini. See Configuration for the variables TumblePipe expects.