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 RenderMan for Maya and/or RenderMan for Katana.

After you installed RenderMan Pro Server properly, set the following environment variables. 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