All CIA Lab PCs reboot on Sundays. To save your renders, send your renders to the Render Farm. This walkthrough will show you the correct procedure to use the render farm.
First, move your entire directory into the Network Render Folder.
1. Open File Explorer.
2. Click Network in the left menu bar.
3. Find and open render-01
4. Move your entire directory into Render_home
5. Rename your directory as your name and project (do NOT include spaces in your new name).
Second, set the project to this directory in render-01.
In this walkthrough our directory is Render_Test. This directory includes the final scene to be rendered, all references scenes, and source images.
1. Open Maya.
2. Go to File > Set Project.
1. In Directory, type in \\render-01\Render_home
2. Click Set (you will receive an alert that says that path isn't a directory, that's okay, continue to the next step).
1. Set Project will now show render-01 and Render_home.
2. Click Render_home and navigate to your directory (in this case, Render_test).
3. Select (don't open) your directory .
4. Click Set.
1. Go to File > Open Scene.
2. Select the Scene you want to open.
If there are errors, you may need to optimize scene size (File > Optimize Scene Size).
Third, prepare the scene for rendering.
Import all references.
1. Go to File > Reference Editor.
2. Right click the reference file.
3. Click on File > Import Objects from Reference.
Check that all source images are coming from the sourceimages folder in your directory on render-01.
If not,
1. Go to Windows > General Editors > File Path Editor.
2. Shift-select all the file paths listed and click Repath Files.
3. Change the "New Path" to the sourceimages folder in your directory on render-01.
4. Check boxes for "Search Subdirectories for Files" and "Repath Currently Resolved files".
1. Enter the Rendering tab.
2. Select Render > Render Settings.
3. Set Render Settings with the correct name prefix, image format, frame/animation extension, start and end frame, renderable camera, and image size.
4. Select AOVs in the AOVs Tab.
1. Go to Arnold > Arnold Renderview to preview your render
Fourth, create a backburner job.
In the Rendering menu tab, go to Render > Create Backburner Job.
1. Create a unique Job Name.
2. Set the start and end frame (this will override your render settings).
3. Set task size. ( This number should be the mac number of frames that can be rendered within an hour. So if each images takes under 10 minutes, set task size to 6).
4. Set Manager Name to 10.2.0.80
5. Set Server Count to 10 (we currently have 10 servers).
6. Click Submit Job.
When the job is done, it will appear in your directory on render-01 under the images folder!
If the task size will take longer than 60 minutes:
1. Check the box "Use Custom Command"
2. Insert "-timeout 120" between the -manager # and -serverCount to extend the timeout to 120m min.
Make sure paths listed in the new custom command are correct, and update them if needed.
Finally, if you are sending different jobs from the same file (separate layers, different renderable camera, etc.), re-save the file under a different name. Do not save over a file that you have already sent a current job from.
- In this situation, change the File name prefix in Render Settings to avoid frames saving over each other.
- Check and recheck render settings!!
- If the render farm does not seem to be working: open the application Remote Desktop Connection. The computer should be "render-manager" and connect through the username "ciaart\render". Contact IT for the updated password. Restart the computer.
If anything about this how-to is confusing or inaccurate, please report your findings using the form at support.cia.edu. We want to make things easier for other students running into the same issue.