Quickly adding things like mix8layer to farm?

[Mydrako]

Well if you know some one who have some programming knowledge, you can probably get him or her to code up a batch script to copy the files to the appropriate folder. If you script it up properly, the good thing is next time if you want to install other shader, you can use the same batch script. :)

[XminusOne]

Thanks Mydrako, I was hoping someone already went through the pain of creating such a script:) Guess not. Thanks for the info though. I appreciate it.

[chronic]

you can put preferences, scripts and shaders on a network location and use environment vatiables to point your computers to them.

i have some rendering machines and they all have the environment variable MAYA_APP_DIR set to the same mapped network drive this points to a folder structure like the one you would normaly have in your user profile
maya
maya/scripts , etc

the maya.env file at this network location also has all its variables set with the same env variable
MAYA_SCRITP_PATH = %MAYA_APP_DIR%\scripts;
MI_CUSTOM_SHADER_PATH = %MAYA_APP_DIR%\2008-x64\mentalray\include;%MAYA_APP_DIR%\2008-x64\mentalray\lib;

. . . etc. add the variables you want.

if you need to install a shader or plugin just add it to the network location and all the machines will get it

there are more advanced things you can do too, like push env vars to multiple machines over the network, but this is a basic start. system administration and IT forums/resources would probably be better than cgtalk for this

[XminusOne]

Wow, thanks chronic....that's exactly what I was looking for. Thank you sir, thank you very much!!!

[Mydrako]

Thats sweet. Thanks Chronic. I learn something new today :)

[Osaires]

The not so good thing about having all shaders on one network location is,
when you need to replace, update or delete a shader,
then you have to shut down all proccesses that uses that shader.
Inn a big studio that could by a big farm and many workstations running maya.

[XminusOne]

Thanks Osaires, thankfully we don't have too many more than 10-15 machines we'd do this for. But thanks for the heads up, we plan on making it bigger as time goes on, so definitely useful info. Thanks again!!!

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