Render Farm - Do you need Maya on every render machine that uses V-ray?

[pulse_3d_media]

I am a self-employed animator, with a modest render farm. I have relied on Mental Ray for the longest time, mainly because it was free with Maya. I am now at an impasse because I am either stuck with Maya 2016 or I buy Arnold, which out of principle and cost I don't want to do. I am looking into V-Ray as my alternative.

So my main question is, do I have to have Maya running on all my computers to use V-ray? Or can I run V-ray + Render Nodes with one license of Maya?

PS Please re-direct me to an existing post if this has already been answered.

[GARY_ROYLANCE]

Hi, The answer is no you don't. You just need to install and run Vray Standalone on the render nodes.

https://docs.chaosgroup.com/display/...uted+Rendering

[Morbid Angel]

If you want the easy setup, then you need maya installation on every render machine, but you don't need to license it. You need vray installation on every machine, and every machine has to point to a license server to be able to acquire render license. Using standalone bypasses the need to have maya installed but most often its a bit more work to use standalone then built in mayabatch command.

[pulse_3d_media]

Awesome! That is the info I needed. Now to do some testing with V-Ray. Thanks!

[mihail_kuzev]

Just some extra info that might be helpful:
1. The full installation of Maya on the render nodes will allow you to use Maya batch rendering with V-Ray and it is also required in case you want to use Backburner to queue your render jobs. (you will also need the full "workstation" installation of V-Ray for Maya)
2. You can also have V-Ray Standalone (V-Ray render slave) running on the render node machines and use Distributed rendering.
3. V-Ray Distributed rendering will also work with V-Ray Interactive rendering - this will allow you to preview the changes that you made in the scene faster with more machines working on the rendering.

Here are some links from our documentation:
Distributed rendering setup: https://docs.chaosgroup.com/display/...uted+Rendering
Distributed rendering settings: https://docs.chaosgroup.com/display/...ering+Settings
Interactive rendering: https://docs.chaosgroup.com/display/...dering+%7C+IPR

[mschreck]

Hi, just to be sure - is this still true with the latest maya versions? Did anything change in regards to rendering vray with mayabatch and licensensing? I hope not