General Technical Reference

For shot renders, use these settings:

Directions for using the render farm:

As most of you probably know by now, the render farm is up and should be
running on all machines in the OUGL lab by the end of today. By the middle
of this week it will also be running in Sieg.

Here is how you use it:

- First any machine that does not have a person logged into it will be
rendering so make sure you log off machines when you aren't using them. In
other words try to lock machines as little as possible, unless you happen
to be rendering locally on that machine, which you shouldn't have to do
anyways. 
- One side effect of using the renderfarm is that you will have to remap
your X: drive every time you log in. I realize this is a hassle but there
is nothing we can do about it.

Q: How do I send a job to the render farm?

A:
First load your file in Maya. Make sure that this file is sitting on the
network somewhere in the _Shared directory. If the file is local on your
machine, copy it to the network first and then load it. The other
machines can't get to the file if it's only on your machine. 
Next go the Render menu and select Farm Render. If your were successful in
sending your job you will see a message that says "Enqueue successful". If
you get an error message, it should be pretty clear what the problem is
from the message itself. If it's not, send me mail.

Another way to send your job to the farm is to add a new shelf with a
button on it. The way you do this is as follows:
Copy the file 

X:/_Shared/rendering/thisYearStuff/shelfStuff/gromit.bmp 

to

C:/Documents and Settings//My Documents/maya/3.0/prefs/icons/

and copy

X:/_Shared/rendering/thisYearStuff/shelfStuff/shelf_Shelf3.mel

to

C:/Documents and Settings//My Documents/maya/3.0/prefs/shelves/


Q:Where does my job go?

A:
When you send your job to the renderfarm, the server will try to use as
many computer as are available to render your job. You can view the status
of your job by cliking on the Render menu and clicking Farm Status. This
will bring up a web browser and will show you all the jobs in the queue
and what machines are working on them. Remember that the server is only
using machines which are currently not logged into. This means that you
can work on other things while waiting for your job to render.

Q:What happens when the rendering is done?

A:
When the rendering is done, you will get a little message that tells you
it's done. 

Q: Where do I find the frames I rendered?

A:
The frames will be sitting in the same folder on the file server, where
your file was located when you sent the rendering job.

Q: Can I use the buttons on the status page to move up my job so that it
gets done first?

A:
You can, however chances are you will make lots of people unhappy. Please
use at your own discretion.

Please aks anyone from the render team if you have any questions.