Mental Ray Standalone Batch Mode

[underearth]

hi there i have number of diffrent scene .mi files..
can someone tell me how to render them all in batch mode...from menatl ray standalone. i am using mental ray standalone 3.4.5.8 and maya 7

actually shave and haircut nodes are there in scene.. so when ever i export all frames in scene in single .mi file..

lots of errors came by.. but single frame render well so i exported .mi file frame.. using export option..

pls help..

[dickagm]

Hi, before all you must be shure that mr standalone works corectly with exported from maya .mi file.. check this with simple scene like polyPlane with default Lambert and sphere with DGS or similiar shader and one light. If the exported mi file is rendering without missing shaders and other errors then you can go future. rendering is very simple you can use in command prompt "mentalrayrender test.mi" witch is pre-setted bat file with options pointing where are the mr libraries, you can type "mentalrayrender -help" for additional options on this type of render. Also you can use "ray test.mi" witch will start directly mr standalone but then it depends on how your environment is set for searching the ray3rc file. And after all you can try the heavy ones.

[underearth]

mental ray works fine i am using it from so many days..
thing is that only shave and haircut works for single frame.. not on batch mode.. so i exported all frames in .mi format

[underearth]

can some one also reply to me how to setup mental ray standalone in muster..

thanks

[dickagm]

just make a bat file with all options you want. the easiest way is to copy-paste the render comand thath you use for rendering single mi file so many times how many are the frames (mi files) and manualy change the name of mi file on each line. for not big sequences 100-200 frames its ok, but for more frames its better to use other tools. I suggest trying this GUI for rendering with standalone directly from maya: http://puppet.cgtalk.ru/download/m2mr\_e.shtml

[underearth]

okay i got some real heavy scene and i want to render using mental ray standalone....
i want to know if this is possible to distribute export of .mi files of particular maya scene over a network since it takes too much time to export .mi file on single machine.(and i am using file per frame output for exporting .mi file)

i use following code to export on single machine(as i am using shave and haircut command is shaveMayatomr.

mayabatch.exe scene.ma -command "shaveMayatomr (and other MEL code);

of course on command prompt it works well but taking out .mi file for 100 frames or more... makes no sense.. it would take so so much of time...

kindly tell how it is possible to batch out .mi files
many thanks

ps: is it possible to batch out .mi files using the script you told me..

sunny

[joojaa]

Sure, just put machine 1 to export frames 1-10 macine 2 11-20 and so on.

But seems to me taht yoru missing some essential commandline skills here.

[underearth]

since i am using.. export..using "Mrtomaya"...from maya batch.. i didn't find any way to batch .mi files..through mayabatch.exe or any other way... i have also placed rayhost file and its working with native maya files ie. ma ..

if you know any otherway please tell...

[joojaa]

Yes so whats the problem here send the same file and same batcscript with a differenet time range to many machines. Its no harder than that. But yeas this means allo thse machines need to have amaya licence and a shave and haircut licence.

If you cant develop the batch script smarter then yoru a bit eboyond help. If you cant figure this out set the frame renge before you use shaveMayatomr

[underearth]

i am doing the same.. i am just exporting out .mi files on all machines using and diffrent frame range.. ie 1-20, 21-40 etc....
..
but for some reason exporting of .mi files is not happening over network...irrespective that mental ray renderning in happening...(i hvae adequate licence renderfarm in studio where i work....)...

i placed a .rayhost file and its working well.....if i am still missing something....(i know jojja will tell me...and about my poor scripting)....

thanks

[joojaa]

QUOTE(sunny chopra @ 08/18/06, 07:58 PM) [snapback]245524[/snapback]
but for some reason exporting of .mi files is not happening over network...irrespective that mental ray renderning in happening...(i hvae adequate licence renderfarm in studio where i work....)...

Who said it would? The export istelf is a single therad program! so you probably can afford tpo split up 1-4 exprors per machine.

Theres no such thing as network export, juts the renderer is over the network, not the data. IT has not yet left maya so it has no mrs capabilities.

Its realy common for my prman renders to have 1/3 of the entire renrtime being the translation. Tahts why i spleit the scenes to logical readachives. so i aonly export the animation not static opbjevcst all over again.

THis is aslo why shave and haircut has a rendertime dso for prman

[underearth]

many thanks..
sorry 4 confussion..