paralel rendering in MR, maya5

[gmask]

Originally posted by mirkoj
How-to, and what do I need to use paralel rendering feature in MR? I as understand it I can use another comp in the network to render frames with mental ray ? or something like that?

You need the Mental Ray standalone render to render in parrallel but to manage rendering on your other seats of Maya you need a distributed rendering manager software like Smedge2.

[dirkusrhombas]

Free network renderer for maya .... will not work with mr though :(

http://www.stationx.com/index.htm

[rollmops]

Hi, I'm also searching for a simple and free solution for distributed render with mentalray.

It should be possible to write a file.bat with render-command lines. But does anybody knows the option to provide the numbre of frames to render?

[mirkoj]

smedge2 works with MR?
Also, is there any render manager that shows frame rendering time, estimated time for animation rendernig etc I miss that since 3dmax :)

[bluemagicuk]

Smedge 2 does not work with mental ray in terms of parralell rendering.
It does not do any form of split frame rendering at all.
Not effitiantly anyway imho. You could write a script for it
if you want.
edit
When I was researching this I found Netscale (http://www.rendercorp.com/) to be the best for single image scattering.edit

Smedge won't natively allow you to split the rendering of a single frame
between computers. You will have to use Maya's command line flags in the
Additional Command Line Parameters input of the Submit Job window to specify
a tiled area of the frame to render on each computer.
Maya's command flags for that are:

xLeft -xl <int> set X sub-region left pixel boundary
of the final image
xRight -xr <int> set X sub-region right pixel boundary
of the final image
yLow -yl <int> set Y sub-region low pixel boundary
of the final image
yHigh -yh <int> set Y sub-region high pixel boundary
of the final image

Launching a multi-threaded render will only work on machines with more
than 1 CPU. To split a frame, you'll have to specify an X and Y range of
the image you want rendered and then stitch them together in Photoshop (or
equivalent). Let me know if this helps.

I am busy looking into this myself and will let your know what I come
up with.
Sigh (day 5 ) :P

[gmask]

>>> Originally posted by mirkoj
[B]smedge2 works with MR?

Yes

>>>Also, is there any render manager that shows frame rendering time, estimated time for animation rendernig etc I miss that since 3dmax :)


Smedge estimates when a render will be complete by averaging the packet times.


If you have the MR standalone renderer on your entwork systems you can use you network machines to render a single image in the Renderview or use it commandline utilities to execute a network render from a single image.. offhand I don't know of any commercial renderfarm utilities that will give you the features you are asking for and support for MR parrallel rendering.

The recent version of Muster support MR and image slices

[mirkoj]

I know that I need stand alone MR for paralel rendering, and that's ok. Just wonder if it can distribute frames for rendering so I don't need to set frame ranges for computers, and one is slower than other so one finishes rendering and just sit there and other is still working :)
And also if there is estimated time left for rendering. That should be simple enough, so we don't need to calculate it by self.
Also rendering queue is great stuf. Just to put every scene that needs to be rendered so I don't have to wake up in the 3-4am to set up next scene for rendering and don't have time to wait until morning :)))

[gmask]

Originally posted by mirkoj
I know that I need stand alone MR for paralel rendering, and that's ok. Just wonder if it can distribute frames for rendering so I don't need to set frame ranges for computers, and one is slower than other so one finishes rendering and just sit there and other is still working :)
And also if there is estimated time left for rendering. That should be simple enough, so we don't need to calculate it by self.
Also rendering queue is great stuf. Just to put every scene that needs to be rendered so I don't have to wake up in the 3-4am to set up next scene for rendering and don't have time to wait until morning :)))

Well it sounds like either Muster or Smedge would do what you need..

[bluemagicuk]

Mental ray standalone price dropped to £600 till march 26th

Not sure if anyone is interested but I have been in contact with
softimage and a few maya resellers and asked about distributed rendering with mental ray. (parrallel rendering)
Ie split one single frame between 4 cpu's
It seems that at this stage it is not something worth looking into if you dont have a tonne
of money to buy many licences and a really hot network. It seems that the mi files that get
created when rendering are pretty large and when distributed over a small network can have
large time scales just to send the packets between the computers (the packets generated can be between 500mb and 2gig).
Feasable if you have a fast network and more than 10 red hot machines.

The advice I was given time and again was to just go for the dual setup with boxx or hp ect.

I was also told that the standalone version of mental ray only supports the mental ray shaders. :shrug:

[McMaster]

Wow, blue magic, where did you get those priceinformations from? This sounds cool!
Just not sure if I got you right: Is there a way to render out of maya using mental in Renderview and distribute one frame over several machines an see a preview of all the buckets that were rendered already (See the picture being built)?

What else is the Integrated Version (On there page they announce a Standalone and an Integrated version) doing more than the Standalone? Is the Integrated more expensive? Is it possible to get one Standalone with Integration for MAX and Maya?

Do you know: If I buy one license of Mental, will I be able to render on two Machines (one with the Mental that is integrated in Maya, one with the Standalone)? Or is the first standalone replacing the mental integrated in Maya and do I have to buy 2 to get a benefit?

[bluemagicuk]

Originally posted by McMaster
Wow, blue magic, where did you get those priceinformations from? This sounds cool!


softimage.com

Originally posted by McMaster
Is there a way to distribute one frame over several machines an see a preview of all the buckets that were rendered already (See the picture being built)?

That was the reason why I was interested originally ... yes you can distribute renders of a single frame across several computers using mental ray standalone.

Originally posted by McMaster


What else is the Integrated Version (On there page they announce a Standalone and an Integrated version) doing more than the Standalone? Is the Integrated more expensive? Is it possible to get one Standalone with Integration for MAX and Maya?

Have a look in the forums for more info on that. (sorry bit busy at the mo) The standalone will work with MAX and Maya and xsi

Originally posted by McMaster

Do you know: If I buy one license of Mental, will I be able to render on two Machines (one with the Mental that is integrated in Maya, one with the Standalone)? Or is the first standalone replacing the mental integrated in Maya and do I have to buy 2 to get a benefit?

No you wont ... MR Standalone only recognises other standalone licences .... or the mental ray for maya licence ... it will not recognise both at the same time ... only one or the other.

[McMaster]

Thanks blue magic for your detailed answers, isn't it a shame that we have to browse softimage webpages to get infos about maya products?!?

[bluemagicuk]

Yes it is a shame ... it seems that parrallel rendering is not going to be in my pipeline
for some time yet .... way too complicated and script based for me. Dag namit

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