I searched the forums and couldn’t find an answer to this question.
I would like to be able to submit vrscene files to Deadline directly from Maya. The way maya submission plug-in script works currently as I understand it, is you would need to have Maya installed on each node as well as Vray for Maya to be able to launch Vray render jobs from the maya submission plug-in, right? I noticed in the Maya submission plug-in a tab for submitting Mental Ray jobs to the MR stand alone renderer. Is there a method or script that will add the same functionality for Vray stand alone? Am I missing something completely obvious here?
I would like to be able to submit vrscene files to Deadline directly from Maya.
We support vray-standalone jobs by allowing submission from the Submit menu in the Deadline Monitor. So in Maya, you would save out your vrscene file and then select it as the file to render in the Monitor submission script. The reason why we have the Mental Ray standalone job option is that you can have Deadline handle the mr file export for the maya scene, and then submit a dependent MR standalone job that renders those mr files.
Good question. I’m not 100% sure if vray standalone is dependent on Maya being installed. If it is, then yes, you would need to have both maya and vray standalone installed on your render nodes. You should probably confirm with the vray guys that this is the case.
As it stands right now the procedure for rendering vray standalone jobs from Maya is, render .vrscene file, open deadline monitor, launch vray standalone script, locate .vrscene file, enter output save path, manually enter frame range and output resolution, then submit. I would love to be able to submit vray standalone renders directly from Maya saving me those additional steps.
Correct me if I’m wrong but the current method for submitting vray jobs from maya is to have Maya+Vray installed on all the render nodes and then submit your scenes (with vray loaded in the Render Globals) via Maya(batch) plug-in?
We could look at supporting vray standalone submission from Maya in future, but currently the only way is the method you described. I guess the export would have to be part of the submission process though, unless there is a way via command line to export the vrscene (like there is for MR).
That’s correct. I had originally thought you were referring to the requirements for vray standalone renders. Just out of curiosity, why the preference for vray standalone?
It’s not a critical problem… Mostly saving me from having to install Maya on all the render nodes (which we’ll never use) and the possibility of any overhead of running vray through maya as a plug-in vs. simply rendering everything through standalone which I understand is faster and more memory efficient. I could be wrong on that last point however.
Yeah, that makes sense. We use vray for maya here and render through maya instead of standalone, but we already had maya installed everywhere, so we just had to deploy the plugin.
I just checked the command line options for vray for maya, and it has these settings:
All purpose flags:
-exportFileName string
Use this to force exporting to a .vrscene file with the
given name. Example:
Render -r vray -exportFileName "c:/1.vrscene"
-noRender
filename
-noRender
Use this to disable rendering.
Usually it is used with -exportFileName to produce a
.vrscene file. Example:
Render -r vray -exportFileName "c:/1.vrscene"
-noRender
filename
-exportSeparate
Use this to export to separate .vrscene files. Example:
Render -r vray -exportFileName "c:/1.vrscene"
-noRender
-exportSeparate
filename
-exportCompressed
Use this to export to compressed .vrscene file (still
experimental). Example:
Render -r vray -exportFileName "c:/1.vrscene"
-noRender
-exportCompressed
filename
That should mean that we can offer a setup that is similar to our MR standalone support within Maya. We’ll add this to the wish list.
