Once you are set up, the process of rendering over the network is fully automatic so that every render you invoke from a client machine is automatically distributed over the network.
To network render a Maya scene within Maya on a master machine
- Ensure that the
maya.rayhosts file has the name of all mental ray network rendering slaves you wish to use (see
Set up a master machine with mental ray standalone (method 1)).
- Start Maya, open a scene and select an option from
Render > Render Using.
- Select
Render > Render Current Frame.
- Select
Render > Render Current Frame >
or
Render > Batch Render >
and ensure that
Render on network machines is enabled.
- To verify that the slave machines are being used, in the same window, select
Progress Messages
from the
Verbosity Level drop-down list.
You should see messages in the console window (or in the mental ray log file for batch render) indicating JOB 0.n for remote jobs, and telling you which slave machines were connected and which machine is being used to render particular tiles.
To network render a Maya scene with Maya from the command line on a master machine
- Ensure that the
maya.rayhosts file has the name of all mental ray network rendering slaves you wish to use (see
Set up a master machine with mental ray standalone (method 1)).
- From a command prompt window, change to the directory where your Maya scene resides.
-
Type the following:
Render -r mr sceneName.mb
To network render with a NVIDIA (.mi) scene with mental ray standalone on a master machine
- This works with mental ray standalone only; this operation is not supported for mental ray for Maya Satellite.
Ensure that the
.rayhosts file has the name of all mental ray network rendering slaves you wish to use (see
Set up a master machine with mental ray standalone (method 1)).
- From a command prompt window, change to the directory where your
.mi file resides.
- Type the following:
ray myFile.mi
- To get progress messages to show how the slave machines are being used, type the following command:
ray -verbose 5 myFile.mi