Script command for enabling/disabling DR?

[Alex_M]

Is there a script command in Max that I can use to enable or disable distributed rendering? I searched this page in the help documents, but I couldn't find a command for it.

[Morne]

Hi Alex

you can type:

show renderers.current

This will spit out ALL the properties for the current renderer. This is typically all the settings you will find in the render dialog specific to the current renderer. In this case we hope its V-Ray

It will show a list of things, each starting with a DOT. So in this case the thing we're looking for from that list is:

.system_distributedRender : boolean

The bit after the colon: in this case "boolean" is the type of input it expects. Boolean is either on or off, 0 or 1, it can't have any other value. In maxscript this is either true or false

So then we showed the properties of our renderer "renderers.current".
To the assign something you take that bit, and add the bit to the end of it from the list ".system_distributedRender", and for the ": boolean" part, is where you assing what it should be
In our case we want to switch it on so it would be:

renderers.current.system_distributedRender = true

...or to switch it off it would be:

renderers.current.system_distributedRender = false

You can also get the current state of it, by not assigning anything and just typing the 1st bit like so:

renderers.current.system_distributedRender

Max can also sometimes be fussy and not always show the change in the UI even though it did do the change you told it (if you type a renderer command while the render dialog is option). Sometimes it updates the UI while it's open, sometimes not. I find it easier to just close the dialog before typing anything. You can open the dialog afterwards again to confirm the commands were accepted, if you wish

[Alex_M]

Very detailed and thorough. Thanks so much, Morne .This did the trick!