network rendering questions

[peterduncan3d]

Hi,
I'm on the verge of buying V-Ray for Maya, and have been searching for info on the extra render nodes you get with V-Ray for Maya, there's a couple of things I'm still not sure about.

Am I correct in thinking that the extra nodes are run as V-Ray standalone renderer, so you don't need ten Maya licenses?

And are these extra nodes similar to the satellite nodes of Mental Ray that come with Maya? Or put another way do they only work for splitting a single frame over many computers, or can they be used with something like Smedge to distribute frames over the network? (I know in Maya 2010 they now offer 5 true Mental Ray nodes for the network license.)

If the extra nodes can be used with a Render Manager to set frames off across a network, does anyone know which managers support V-Ray, I see Smedge has an option for V-Ray for Maya, but I can't see one for the standalone, so I'm guessing that won't work, presumably it would only pick up the one render node in the Maya plugin. (I'm guessing here).

Would be greatful of any general advice anyone has on using V-Ray for network rendering.

Cheers,

Peter.

[shadevfx]

They work almost identically to mental ray standalone. Meaning, no need for a license of maya. They do work with a distributed rendering system like smedge, rush or deadline. You do however have to export your scene to .vrscene before you can submit it (much like mental ray standalones .mi format).

They tend to be very fast, stable and efficient, though it can take some time on some scenes to translate to a vr native scene file.

Pretty swank deal 10 nodes for 1k USD. if you ask me.

[mad187]

I just saved out my scene as a vrscene. How do I go about submitting the vrscene file over the network or on individual computers ( I am using maya2010 and windows 7. Please do be specific about the commandline codes as I am a newbie)? Do you guys usually save a .vrscene for each frame? Thanks in advance

[awnold1]

bring up the v-ray standalone command prompt (in the vray folder). it has the verbage on how to get a job going in there.
Matt

[timdog]

I like to have a regular windows shortcut at the desktop at which I type as follows in the "Target:" field
C:\Windows\System32\cmd.exe /k vray.exe -scenefile="c:\users\username\desktop\filename.vrsc ene"
You can also add additional options like -portnumber and so on...
When I want to render a vrscene I make sure the scenefile is located at the path and just doubleclick the shortcut predefined with options.

[mad187]

So do you turn the entire scene into one vrscene file? or each frame separately? If it is separate, and you specify the frames in the cmd line...will it grab the files and render accordingly? Sorry I am asking so many questions. I have a mac background but am using windows for all this so I am a little lost.

[timdog]

I suppose you just activate animation and specify the framrange in your Maya scene and then export your vrscene.

[mad187]

But how do i go about sending that file into backburner? so that it can break up the vrscene file into "task" sizes