Updating to a nightly build without having to reinstall plugins

[evanerichards]

Is there any way to update vray for maya without using the installer? Perhaps just replacing the relevant files from an archive or something like that?
The problem we are running into is that we use yeti which uses environment variables. Whenever we install a new nightly build though it changes those environment variables and we have to go back in and change those variables on every single computer on our farm (this is what our IT guy says, I'm not certain if I'm explaining it right though).

Any ideas?

[vlado]

We have .zip packages for the nightly builds now, perhaps you can use these and just copy the relevant files where they need to be? Or maybe set things up so that the V-Ray files are pulled from the network rather than being installed on each and every render slave.

Best regards,
Vlado

[evanerichards]

Do you mean the .rar's? That's all I see and those just have the exe installers in them. Am I looking in the wrong place or are they located somewhere else?

[ivaylo.ivanov]

They are _zip.rar. However I think this was done only for VRay 3.0.

[Fredrik Averpil]

I'd recommend you follow the arbitrary install instructions in the docs. This means you can have several versions of V-Ray installed (as none is really installed inside the Maya directory). Using e.g. Python scripts you can then launch Maya with the version of V-Ray you wish to use.

You then specify the appropriate environment variables in the Python script, so that your Yeti will always work. You can even have Yeti launched in the same way... meaning you can pair up a certain version of V-Ray/Yeti with a particular Python script. That's pretty awesome for production usage, always knowing all machines are launching Maya and/or V-Ray/Yeti with the same versions.

I've got an old writeup on this over here: http://fredrikaverpil.tumblr.com/post/17727016787 (although it's due for an update as it doesn't use and talk about subprocesses, stderr/stdout catching or Linux support)

[evanerichards]

I'd recommend you follow the arbitrary install instructions in the docs. This means you can have several versions of V-Ray installed

Thank you sir! I will look into it.

[evanerichards]

They are _zip.rar. However I think this was done only for VRay 3.0.

So it's only for 3dsmax then? Because the nightlies for maya are only up to 2.45 as far as I can see.

[vlado]

It's for Maya too, but apparently we only did it for the V-Ray 3.0 builds of V-Ray for Maya, which are not generally available yet.

Best regards,
Vlado

[ALFRED_ST_MEDIA]

+1 for arbitrary install
+100 for zip files for nightlies.

evenerichards,

Yes, we have all our maya plugins, including vray and phoenix installed centrally on the server. We then point the maya.env for all users to this location. There is a 'versionless' folder that all clients point to for each plugin, then there are versioned folders. The versionless folder has the latest 'blessed' version. I can change the version a user is running by updating their maya.env to point to a specific vray version. Our render farm machines use the maya environment variables from the user's local maya.env, so I can run the latest nightly, test it on the farm, while another user is using the blessed version on the farm.

The zip files make updating the versions infinitely easier. No more having to install, copy, uninstall for each update.

-ctj