Different strategies for the use of standalone or network licenses of Maya.
If a computer running mental ray for Maya has a standalone license, rendering jobs for the slave computers must be initiated from the master computer that has the Maya license. The workstation can distribute mental ray for Maya rendering jobs to a maximum of four slave computers.
For network licenses, the functionality is slightly more flexible. The license running Maya and the license running mental ray for Maya can be logged out separately, allowing certain rendering tasks to be initiated remotely.
Here are two possible scenarios for using mental ray for Maya with network licenses:
- (Interactive) With Maya running interactively on a workstation, initiate a mental ray for Maya render (either a single frame in the Render View, Batch render or command line render) on the workstation. The networked mental ray for Maya portion of your license is logged out. This allows the mental ray Satellite slaves indicated in your rayhost file to participate in the render.
- (Offline) If you launch a command line mental ray for Maya render, the computer that launched the command then becomes the master machine for mental ray Satellite rendering.
Note: If you have launched Maya but have not yet rendered with mental ray for Maya since the start of your interactive session, no mental ray for Maya line item from your networked license is checked out. You may therefore start a command-line mental ray for Maya render from another host. This checks out the mental ray for Maya portion of the license, making it unavailable for any other workstation, including the workstation of the user who launched Maya.