Batch rendering with nightly build (missing frame extension)

[jensl]

I'm moving from to the nightly build from 03/11, and having some issues with file naming when batch rendering on our render farm. Things are peachy with 'animation' ticked on, but without that I can't seem to get V-Ray to render with a frame extension. I also tried batching locally with animation turned off, and got the same result. I've poked around the vraySettings node and also looked at defaultRenderGlobals, and something seems to have changed as this used to work.

For example, I am rendering in V-Ray. I switch to Maya SW, and set the Frame/Animation ext to "name.#.ext," to render a sequence. Now if I switch back to V-Ray, animation is turned back on. This is problematic because with animation toggled on, a render node will render every frame of the sequence, instead of just the frames/chunk that it is assigned to. Anyone else encountered this?

Jens

[vlado]

Thanks for the pointer; I guess the solution would be to always write frame numbers when rendering in batch mode and I've made a note to implement this.

Best regards,
Vlado

[vladimir.nedev]

You're probably updating from the official release to the nightly builds. In order to fix V-Ray to work with backburner in Maya 2010, I had to change the source of the V-Ray animation settings. Instead of taking them from the vraySettings node, they're now taken from defaultRenderGlobals, like all other renderers. The UI is also hooked to defaultRenderGlobals so that's why when you turn on animation in Maya software it's turned on in V-Ray as well. Here are the parameters changed :

Animation - now uses defaultRenderGlobals.animation
Start frame - now uses defaultRenderGlobals.startFrame
End frame - now uses defaultRenderGlobals.endFrame
by frame - now uses defaultRenderGlobals.byFrameStep

The problems you're experiencing stem from the fact that the scripts sending the jobs to your render farm need to be updated to use the new parameters. I realize the inconvenience, but unfortunately this was the only way to support V-Ray with backburner. So sorry for that.

I don't think we should add the frame number when animation is not checked, as the current behavior is the same with Maya's behavior, and that is what most users would expect. If you need to render a single frame with the extension written in the filename, just turn on animation and set the start and end frames to the same values.

Greetings,
Vladimir Nedev

[temp_design]

I agree, having it always add a # during batch mode doesn't seem like the best idea.

the problem as i see it is that your "animation" check box is linked to the Maya common "Frame/Animation ext:" drop down
however the "Frame/Animation ext" doesn't really have anything to do with whether or not you are rendering an animation... it only gives the format for the the naming of a frame.

it seams a better solution. would be to just remove your animation check box. and just have Vray decide behind the scenes if someone wants to render an animation or a single frame... the same way Maya normally would (it only renders a sequence if you click batch render).
or at the very least just unlinking these two items.

To comment on the above post, Yes we could set the start and end frame for every packet on the farm, but this seems odd. as it would make Vray useless to most people using 3rd Party farm software. unless they can script and know how to add in the preRender mel to set this up. We use Muster, it sends a standard batch process to each frame denoting the start frame and end frame for the packet. however with animation turned on. each node renders ever frame. With it turned off in the newest build, we don't get a frame #.

This also brings up another point about having two common tabs, that are mysteriously linked under the hood. Is there no way to just stick with the standard Maya common tab, the way Mental ray does? Or link the vray to the Maya tab with expressions so the users sees what is being taken from where?

This is my First post here, and I just wanted to thank you guys for all your support thus far. We really enjoy using Vray, and are excited to be implementing nightly builds into our workflow. hopefully it will be mutually beneficial.
thanks, hope we can resolve this soon.
- Jeremy @ buck

[vladimir.nedev]

Hi,

actually when you modify the "Frame/Animation ext" option, Maya runs some scripts and depending on whether you have a # in your choice it turns animation on/off ( i.e. modifies defaultRenderGlobals.animation).

The animation checkbox is needed because you might want to render a single frame with batch rendering. Also some people find it useful to render a whole sequence inside Maya (much like this is done in 3ds Max).

Render farms that use the "Render" command with a "-s" and "-e" options to specify the range of frames a specific render server should render, will not be affected. The new V-Ray builds will modify "defaultRenderGlobals.startFrame" and "defaultRenderGlobals.endFrame" when "-s" and "-e" are used on the command line. So an update of a render farm software/scripts is needed only if they run custom scripts to set the frame range.

If Muster really uses the "Render" command with the "-s" and "-e" options, the only reason for your problems I can think of, is that the vrayRenderer.xml file is not properly updated on the render servers. This file is located in rendererDesc\vrayRenderer.xml inside the Maya bin directory. It tells the Render command how command line options are translated to changes in the scene. If you're using a custom script to update installations (in order to avoid running the install process on each server), like some people do, you might have forgotten to update this file. That would be the first thing I would check.

We cannot directly use the Maya common tab as some options in V-Ray are different. For example, we support different output image formats. You can also take a look at the script editor to see what attribute is modified when you change something in the VRay Common Tab UI, if you need to do some scripting. Also, using an expression on our attributes that is linked to Maya's attribute would mean that you cannot directly change them in the UI, since they have an input connection from something else. That would be quite inconvenient.

Greetings,
Vladimir Nedev

[jermy]

hmm, I will check that file. We have had this problem with the farm rendering every frame since 2 official released back. so we have always rendered with animation turned off, and the "Frame/Animation ext" set to name.#.ext. I will look into this more though, and see if it's something we are doing incorrectly. If i can't figure it out, i will post a log, and render settings.

I guess i always assumed if you where going to batch a single frame in Maya, you had to set the -s and -e.

Also, it is a bit cumbersome to have to go to your render settings, and turn animation on and off depending on whether or not you are doing a preview, or rendering a sequence? is there no way to have the default render button just render a single frame? and have a separate button to render a sequence? Like Maya normally would? this would also illuminate the need for the animation toggle correct? then just add something like the "Frame/Animation ext" to the Vray common tab so people can choose the format for their frame names?

thanks
- jeremy

[vladimir.nedev]

You can use the "Render animation only in batch mode" option, just under animation to make V-Ray behave as Maya would. You can then leave animation on and rendering inside Maya will still render only the current frame. The resulting image won't have a frame number though unlike Maya, I'm not sure whether this is good or bad.

Greetings,
Vladimir Nedev

[jensl]

Thank you for your help and detailed explanations, Vladimir. I hadn't bothered to read up on the Backburner stuff since we don't use it here, so thank you for explaining the changes. We've got things working now, but still having that plugin loading issue. Vladimir your mention of vrayRenderer.xml was also helpful, as that was part of the problem.

Jens