Will Townsend

Messing with HDRI lighting instead of the mental ray Physical sun and sky…!

Colour needs ajusting..

Colour is ajusted! Much better

Soooo, Heres a few up-to-date renders! Enjoy!

Just love the sky in the background...! Looks real!

Again, The Sky!

Action Shot!

Showing main base texture. Still WiP!

Hope Ya’ll Like it!

Will,

Hey,

Im off due to school holidays for 2 weeks. I have been in maya rendering some pretty heavy stuff, so I needed to use the mental ray satellite upon my network. Basically creating a renderfarm.

I have created a manager for your maya.rayhosts file, I have had a few emails asking if there is any other ways, as my guide did not make it simple enough. While waiting for a render, I decided to create MRN Manager, Mental ray network manager.

So, Without furthur adue! MRN Manager v1.0!

MRN Manager Interface v1.0

So, the guide!

1. We need a copy of MRN Manager, so, download MentalRayNetworkManager (326) or rapidshare mirror!
2. We need to find out the IP Addresses of the slave computers, Have these handy!
3. Run MRN Manager, and click the ‘Browse’ button. Locate your Maya ‘Prefs’ folder.
   See the maya help docs for more info on the maya prefs folder.
4. If there is currently a maya.rayhosts file, there is no need to create one and it should be automatically detected. If there is no current maya.rayhosts file, create one using the create button.
5. Once you have created/located your maya.rayhosts file, Press the button to load it up.
6. Add, delete or edit any IPs or PC Names using the GUI, Simple.
7. The default port for mental ray satellite 2009 is 7109, Please refer to the documentation as to which port you should use if you are on a different version.
8. Now close MRN Manager, and open maya. Make sure the service ‘RaySat2009Server’ is running on any slave pc’s. This may be different for different versions. Also make sure that the process ‘raysat2009server.exe’ is running on any slave pc’s.
9. Cheack that the required ports are open/forwarded on all pc’s.
10. In maya, make sure you are using the mental ray renderer!
11. Select the render options, Render -> Batch Render (Select the option box on the right)
12. Enjoy Much Faster Renders!

If this helped you, Please leave a comment!

Will,

###UPDATED GUIDE###

Ive been into 3d recently, and my scenes would get quite big, Take hours to render etc. I wanted to learn how to use my other computers on my network for a speed boost.
To my dismay, I could find no decent guide on how to do it. I did manage to find out by piecing together around 4-5 different forum threads.
As I’m kind (And waiting for my render to finish), I thought I’d write a basic how-to guide on how to use/setup the mental ray satellite 2009.
So, Lets get started.

Step #1
Make sure you have installed Maya on your host computer, and install the metal ray satellite on your ’slave’ pc’s. (I have installed Maya on my slave pc also, I’m not sure if this is necessary)

Step #2
We need to create the ‘maya.rayhosts’ file on your host PC, to add the ip’s of the slaves pc’s.

Open notepad (or a similar program)
Then type in the IP addresses of each pc that is running metal ray satalite, followed by the port.

EG. (one pc)
‘10.1.1.100:7109′

Example (Two PC’s)
‘10.1.1.101:7109
10.1.1.102:7109′

The port for mental ray satellite 2009 is default to ‘7109′
For mental ray standalone the port is ‘7009′

Then save the file as ‘maya.rayhosts’ to this directory:

NOTE: Make sure you have not saved it as a text file, other wise this won’t work! When saving under the name textbox, you should see a list box, click it and change it to ‘all files’.

XP:
“\Documents and Settings\<username>\My Documents\maya\ 2009\en_US\prefs”

Vista:
“\Users\<username>\Documents\maya\2009\en_US\prefs”

For other OS’s please see the maya documentation here.

Step #3

Make sure you have allowed the programs to the network/internet. And it may be wise to disable anti-virus/firewall programs as they may interfere.
Check that the RaySat2009Server service is running on all slave pc’s.

Step #4

Load up maya on your host pc, go to the rendering options, render->Batch Render (Click the option box).
Make sure the box is ticked ‘Render on network machines’.
Now render it!
Should have no errors and your render will take a minute to start (just while its copying all the required files over to the slaves), Then your render will be boosted!

END NOTE:

You may overlook the maya documentation, but it is extreemly helpful at times. Please use this as your primary resource for help, its very good!

http://download.autodesk.com/us/maya/2009help/index.html