RenderMan for Houdini is installed using the RenderMan Installer, which manages the downloading, installation and licensing of RenderMan Pro Server (the actual renderer) along with all bridge products.

After you installed RenderMan Pro Server and Render for Houdini properly, set the following environment variables (XX.X is the RenderMan version, and YY.Y is the Houdini version). You are now ready to setup your first scene!

RMANTREE=/path/to/RenderManProServer-XX.X
RFHTREE=/path/to/RenderManForHoudini-XX.X
HOUDINI_PATH=$RFHTREE/YY.Y:&

Houdini picks up the system's environment variables (such as $HOME) as well as the environment variables of the shell from which it was started. Houdini specific environment variables can be set in the houdini.env, found in the following locations:

Windows: %HOME%/houdiniX.X/houdini.env
Mac: ~/Library/Preferences/houdini/YY.Y/houdini.env
Linux: ~/houdiniYY.Y/houdini.env