Command line rendering: tiling error (-xl...)

[mnagis]

I am attempting to render a large format image from maya with the command prompt outside maya. i need to use the tiling flags available, but i am getting errors with any of them (-xl, -xr, -yl, -yr). The rendering works without them, but when i try and include them in the command string (Render -x 6000 -y 6000 -xl 0 -xr 2999 -yl 0 -yr 2999 C:testtest.mb) i get a message that reads as follows:

Invalid flag: -xl

We have tried this on many machines at my school with no luck. i have searched this forum as far back as a year ago, and i came up with everything about tiling, but nothing about this problem in particular. therefore, any assitance would be greatly appreciated. thanking you all in advance.

mark

[mnagis]

i just tried this procedure in our computer lab here at school, and it works just fine. i dont know what the problem could be with my (and my friends computers). any thoughts?

[joojaa]

different version of maya? in maya 6 theese flags have been renamed and dumped under the -reg flag.

-reg int int int int Set sub-region pixel boundary of the final image (left, right, bottom, top)

Refeer to render -r sw -? for more info,as theres errata in the html help files.

[mnagis]

thanks, you were right i was running 6.0 and the school still has 5.0. now for my next question:

can you tile your render and use mental ray as your renderer? if not, is there another way to render a large scale image while using mental ray (large scale means 9600x19200). thanks in advance and happy holidays.

[joojaa]

Yes and no... Not in command line options for maya to mentalray. Mantalray standalone yes, an trough mel too with a bit jumping the hoops. But thenegain mentalray is designed to speread teh load onto several computers so theres rarely any NEED for this as long as you have many computers available, as long as you have configured your rayrc properly (consult the manuals on this note theres no link to the mer manual on the maya help page bu one can find it trough search)

Then comes the kicker, If you raytrace then you dont realy BENEFIT from rendering into tiles, theres no memory gains for doing so as everything needs to be loaded into memory ANYWAY. So the end result wouls bbe no better if you render as tiles.

[mnagis]

how is this possible in mental ray standalone? and by standalone do you mean inside maya as opposed to the command prompt? thanks for your timely response.

[joojaa]

Standalone is a separate program!

[joojaa]

Youd better describve the scene so i can tell youy if theres going to be enay benefit in rendering in tiles.

If you want to render on multiple machines make sure mr is configiured to spread the jobs across a network! Its the same thing, but more optimal.

[joojaa]

also are you rnedering to print And if so do you understand what the difference between output dpi, and printter dpi and how they relate to target lpi?

This is asked very often by people who think they know and tehy realy render far too large poictures for their chosen output.

so 9600x19200 so you want to render a poster thats 106-64 inches (the higher is standard poster printter quality and the second one fairly high quality) by 213-128 inces. Ir your aiming for somethinbg smaller than that then please do a sanity check.