After your simulation is ready you can render the agents using renderman, arnold, vray (maya only or stand alone). For each of these render engines we provide procedurals that can be executed inside Maya/Houdini or with the stand alone renderer.
All the procedurals need an atoms cache and a variation json file.
Please check again the rendering section to know more about what you can do with each renderer.
In houdini you can use the atoms proxy node only to visualize a cache. To render the agents you must use an arnold or renderman procedural node. From the Atoms menu use the Create Renderman/Arnold procedural commands. They will create the right procedural nodes and set up all the parameters to render your cache. If oyu are using renderman then you can use the ri_dynamicload node created as a material for the proxy node.
Building variations
Please have look to the next section to know more about how you can use variations.
Using Lod
You might also setup geos and materials for different LOD levels.
The render procedural use the agent "lod" string metadata to render the correct lod geos and materials. To setup the lod on the agents you can use the lod behaviour module or you can just add a lod string metadata with a custom module. The "lod" and "variation" metadata will be saved inside your cache and used at render time.