Backburner

[Yannick]

Hi,

what should be the setup to use Backburner for Maya with Vray? I have the build that support it but when setting up the render, I use the option "from the scene file" for the renderer. It doesn't work as this make my render farm trying to render the file as a Maya file.
What should I do to get it to render using Vray standalone?

Thanks

Yannick

[vladimir.nedev]

You just need to select V-Ray as the current renderer within Maya for the scene you want to render through backburner. Rendering with backburner won't use the V-Ray standalone, it will start a new Maya batch process and render with the V-Ray renderer within Maya ( which is not that much different compared to rendering with the standalone, the difference is, the scene doesn't need to be written to a vrscene file at all).

Greetings,
Vladimir Nedev

[Yannick]

Hi thanks for your answer.
However, I do not see Vray in the choice of renderer within Backburner.

Cheers,

Yannick

[vladimir.nedev]

Yes, the choices are hard coded in the Maya scripts. We cannot add V-Ray there. So using "from the scene file" is the only option.

Greetings,
Vladimir Nedev

[Yannick]

ok thanks. But still I can't get it to work. Is there anything else I need to setup on the render farm and my workstation?

Yannick

Edit: I got some feedback from support. I guess it worth mentioning:
The renderer path in Backburner should be set to:
C:/Program Files/Autodesk/Maya2009/bin/Renderer.exe
This also mean that Maya and Vray for Maya needs to be installed.

At this point my render node is now reacting to the job submitted through Backburner but it still doesn't work. I get the error message: Process exited with error code 211 and Maya exited with status 210

[vladimir.nedev]

I don't think you need to set the renderer to the Maya 2009 one. I am testing this with the "Renderer path" set to
C:/Program Files/Autodesk/Maya2010/bin/Render
and it works fine. I can imagine problems coming from the fact Maya 2009 is used, since Backburner for Maya was introduced with Maya 2010.

So what build exactly are you using ? Can you tell me what V-Ray prints in the output window when Maya is started, the version number should be there.

If you don't have Maya 2010 on the render server you can try installing it and using that.

Greetings,
Vladimir Nedev

[Yannick]

Sorry for the confusion, I am using Maya 2010.
I copied the path from the machine I am using to access the net that has Maya 2009.

I manage to get to work by restarting the render farm after installing Maya and Vray.

It is now working except that the sun/sky doesn't render.
Should I set something up in order to have the sun/sky to work?

The build I am using is: 1.80.01

Thanks

Yannick

[vladimir.nedev]

So the sun/sky renders in Maya's render view, but not when you do a backburner render ? The sky is considered background so it has an alpha channel of 0. Some image viewers may mask this out. This may be the reason why you don't see the sky. I tested this now and it confused me as well at first. But otherwise it works.

Greetings,
Vladimir Nedev

[Yannick]

That's correct. I have the sun/sky in May, but it doesn't get rendered on the render farm. I have made more tests and still get the same problem. I also have only 1 blade that render the other give me some error.

Yannick

[vladimir.nedev]

Can you copy/paste the errors you get on the render server that fails ? The whole log of the backburner render server is located by default in :
C:\Program Files (x86)\Autodesk\Backburner\Network\backburnerServer .log
It seems it's not possible to copy/paste directly from the server's window.

And also can you attach the two images, the one from Maya's render view and the result of the backburner job. I tested this just now and it worked.

Greetings,
Vladimir Nedev

[Yannick]

What's your email?

Thanks

Yannick

[vladimir.nedev]

vladimir.nedev [at] chaosgroup [dot] com

Greetings,
Vladimir Nedev