demo38
04-25-2003, 08:11 PM
Sorry for the long-winded questions, just trying to get real user feedback instead of a sales pitch!
We currently render on a network environment of about 60 machines, using LightWave... And considering Maya 5. I understand that mental ray (plug-in) ships with maya. But, mental ray limits use to a total of 4 cpu's on a single workstation, using seat license fees of, at best $1,000 / seat, for network rendering. (This would definately be out for us here.) But, given we are interested in features like GI, HDRI, caustics, etc. this brings about a few questions...
1) Does Maya's built-in render engine support GI, HDRI, caustics, without using mental ray? And, thus, the ability to network render these features, or would it be limited to only using mental ray on one machine?
2) I've read that mental ray is GUI-less, (reminds me of LightWave's Screamernet). I was hoping for a GUI this round though, as we currently use a 3rd party app within LightWave to acheive this. Is the Maya 5 version of mental ray still GUI-less?
3) Is Maya's render engine GUI-less also for network rendering?
4) Finally, what is your oppinion overall of Maya's network rendering capabilities for ease of use, stablity, adding jobs to a queue manager (if it exists), etc???
Thanks!
We currently render on a network environment of about 60 machines, using LightWave... And considering Maya 5. I understand that mental ray (plug-in) ships with maya. But, mental ray limits use to a total of 4 cpu's on a single workstation, using seat license fees of, at best $1,000 / seat, for network rendering. (This would definately be out for us here.) But, given we are interested in features like GI, HDRI, caustics, etc. this brings about a few questions...
1) Does Maya's built-in render engine support GI, HDRI, caustics, without using mental ray? And, thus, the ability to network render these features, or would it be limited to only using mental ray on one machine?
2) I've read that mental ray is GUI-less, (reminds me of LightWave's Screamernet). I was hoping for a GUI this round though, as we currently use a 3rd party app within LightWave to acheive this. Is the Maya 5 version of mental ray still GUI-less?
3) Is Maya's render engine GUI-less also for network rendering?
4) Finally, what is your oppinion overall of Maya's network rendering capabilities for ease of use, stablity, adding jobs to a queue manager (if it exists), etc???
Thanks!