author
Sam
Weisbard
Chicago-based Studio/Maya consultant for training and production work
sweisbard@attbi.com
special
thanks to
Design Engine
for hosting these pages.
Local Batch Rendering.
08.22.01
So you want to render overnight? Great!
Studio
The interactive StudioTools interface only permits one render to launch at a time, and doesn't allow more than one render to be scheduled for the future. If you attempt to start a second render, Studio asks if you want to kill the first to proceed.
The rendering executable can be launched from a shell window by cd'ing to the project level, then using one of the following statements:
renderer sdl/file > sdl/out.file raytracer sdl/file > sdl/out.file powercaster sdl/file > sdl/out.file powertracer sdl/file > sdl/out.file
The really cool thing about
this is that multiple renders can be scheduled in serial so the next starts
when the previous ends. All you have to do is to type multiple statements
in the same window. For example:
cd ~/user_data/project1/ renderer sdl/file1 > sdl/out.file1 raytracer sdl/file2 > sdl/out.file2 cd ~/user_data/project2/ powercaster sdl/file3 > sdl/out.file3
By typing all this in a
shell window, the raytrace starts when the render ends, and so on. Just
be sure not to close that shell window or logout.
other than the command line, one could put the above commands in a text
file and execute the entire file's commands by typing
source filename &
This would execute the commands sequentially, just as above, but it would background the "source" process, letting you logout.
Beyond simple command line execution, the only method I know about to schedule renders is to use Dispatcher. I've never tried it, but it requires a shared nfs disk between any machine involved in the rendering, and of course needs to be installed on all the machines. It has advanced tools for load management, I think, and timed execution. Install the dispatcher docs off your StudioTools install cdrom and check it out.
Maya
This is easy. I don't know the particulars yet, but for reference follow the Studio instructions.