1. UFCEKT-20-33D Modelling and Animation 3D Modelling & Animation Rendering

2. UFCEKT-20-33D Modelling and Animation Agenda Choices to make when rendering a scene Render workflow Renderer selection and related settings Network rendering Batch rendering Project folder structure

3. UFCEKT-20-33D Modelling and Animation Choices for Rendering Renderer - Hardware, Software, Vector Image Format - avi, mpg, gif, jpg, Resolution - width x height e.g. 640 x 480 Sequence - start frame, end frame, nth frames to render File name and extensions Anti-aliasing Quality Raytracing options (increases rendering times!) Network Rendering - Mental Ray

4. UFCEKT-20-33D Modelling and Animation Rendering Workflow Preview rendering with playblast Set project rendering configuration in render globals Use IPR for preview and adjustments Preview animation from batch-rendering n-frames Batch-render sequence from command line

5. UFCEKT-20-33D Modelling and Animation Select Rendering from here Render Icons

6. UFCEKT-20-33D Modelling and Animation Rendering: Select Icon Render to Window using current Settings Render to IPR ‘Interactive Photorealistic Rendering’ Modify current settings in Render Globals dialogue boxes

7. UFCEKT-20-33D Modelling and Animation Render Window

8. UFCEKT-20-33D Modelling and Animation Render Window

9. UFCEKT-20-33D Modelling and Animation Drag a rectangle around the region to render IPR Render Window

10. UFCEKT-20-33D Modelling and Animation Render Globals: Common 1. Select Renderer Render Using Maya Software Maya Hardware Maya Vector (must be plugged-in)

11. UFCEKT-20-33D Modelling and Animation Render Globals:Common 2. Select Image Format IFF by default Movie formats.avt..mpeg etc. Bitmap.jpg,.gif etc.

12. UFCEKT-20-33D Modelling and Animation Render Globals: Common 3. Select Image Size 320 x 240 pixels a good size for rendering a preview

13. UFCEKT-20-33D Modelling and Animation Render Globals: Common 4. Select Camera View to Render

14. UFCEKT-20-33D Modelling and Animation Render Globals: Software Renderer 5. Select Render Quality Raytracing switched off by default. Switching on raytracing will increase rendering times substantially.

15. UFCEKT-20-33D Modelling and Animation Render Globals: Vector Renderer 6. Select Vector Render Quality and Shading IPR rendering not available with vector renderer

16. UFCEKT-20-33D Modelling and Animation Vector renderer only available if plugged-in here Windows - Settings / Preferences - Plug-in Manager

17. UFCEKT-20-33D Modelling and Animation Depth - Sorting Problems at Render Time Clipping planes assigned values at render time of -1 (near) and 0 (far)

18. UFCEKT-20-33D Modelling and Animation Displaying the camera clipping planes (Maya 8.5) Select the camera first to see the option to display its clipping planes

19. UFCEKT-20-33D Modelling and Animation If clipping planes have very large limits precision can be lost when comparing depths of objects in close proximity of each other leading to rendering artifacts

20. UFCEKT-20-33D Modelling and Animation If depth sorting errors occur one solution is to manually set the clipping planes to just encompass the nearest and farthest object in the scene and turn of Auto Render Clip Plane

21. UFCEKT-20-33D Modelling and Animation Network Rendering Rendering tasks shared between computers across a network Requires a ‘master’ (server) and ‘slave’ machines (hosts) Network rendering software server on master machine distributes rendering tasks to slave machines Rendering server co-ordinates slaves return of rendered animation frames to master via network to common destination folder Images then composted back into sequences -.avi.mpg in post production process - Premiere, After Effects etc. Maya - network rendering setup a ‘mission’ - better third-party solutions. Number of slave machines restricted by licence type 3DS MAX - network rendering out of the box since the early MSDOS versions - no restriction on number of network slaves

22. UFCEKT-20-33D Modelling and Animation Network Rendering Master slaves Rendered animation frames returned to common folder on network

23. UFCEKT-20-33D Modelling and Animation Establishing Network Rendering with Maya and Mental Ray Choose a machine to use as the host (must have Maya installed) Install Mental Ray Satellite on all slave machines Try ‘pinging’ the hosts on the network to verify ip connectivity list hostnames on master machine in the Maya.rayhosts file here: /My Documents/maya/7.0/prefs/ (change the Maya version etc.) Master and slave must communicate on same port - default is 7106 - port established during installation of Mental Ray - specified in: windows\system32\drivers\etc\services (edited this file with care) mi-ray 7106/tcp// Maya 7 mi-raysat85 7106/tcp// Maya 8.5 Each Mental Ray release is different - must use matching version for slave and host machines

24. UFCEKT-20-33D Modelling and Animation

25. UFCEKT-20-33D Modelling and Animation http://www.lamrug.org/presentations/oct2004/mental_ray_for_maya_render_farm_.htm Some further information here... Establishing Network Rendering with Maya and Mental Ray

26. UFCEKT-20-33D Modelling and Animation Examples of Rendering using Mental Ray

27. UFCEKT-20-33D Modelling and Animation Batch Rendering Preview animation from batch-rendering n-frames Batch-render sequence from command line

28. UFCEKT-20-33D Modelling and Animation

29. UFCEKT-20-33D Modelling and Animation Project Folder Structure Render output sent to the images folder by default