Submitter plugin for vrscene files (V-Ray Standalone)?

[infinitesunrise]

Hey all, I can't imagine this hasn't been asked before but I couldn't find much info by googling or by reading the documentation: Is there a way to submit standalone V-Ray render jobs (In the form of V-Ray's vrscene format) to Qube? I know that Qube supports the V-Ray plugins for several 3D applications by way of their individual Qube job types (Maya job type, 3DMax job type, etc), but what if I don't want to license a copy of Maya on every one of my render nodes just so that it can pass renders to it's V-Ray plugin when the same task could be accomplished sans a dozen copies of Maya by V-Ray Standalone? Creating a vrscene job type seems like it would be vastly easier than creating a Maya or 3DMax job type, yet I don't see any such job type in Qube's submit menu.

Does this functionality exist in the form of some other job type (And if so, how do I get it working)? And if not, why has it not happened? Is there a community-developed vrscene job type out there somewhere that I just haven't heard of yet? I'm totally ready to graduate from using Maya as an (EXPENSIVE) crutch to kickstart my V-Ray renders in Qube, so if anyone can explain how to do this with just V-Ray Standalone I'd be most grateful! Thanks.

[infinitesunrise]

...Bump? I'll be honest guys, the lack of information on what I would assume is a very common topic and lack of response here over the course of a week is troubling to say the least. I'm really expected to buy a complete copy of Maya for every one of my render nodes and assume that Qube has zero direct support for V-Ray? Seriously?

[BrianK]

Hello,

As far as the delay in response: We always answer our regular support requests before forum requests - this is by design, as the customers who pay for support get preferential treatment.  If we are short-handed, as we have been for the last week and a half (due to a Qube Certified Administrator class in Los Angeles and various on-site visits), the forum topics may seem to be ignored.  That's not the case, there's just an order of operations, and the forum is at the end.  If you/your company is up to date with your/their support contract, you will always get faster answers by emailing support at pipelinefx.com.

As far as needing a license for Maya rendering:  Maya does not use a license for rendering - this is true of both command line and jobtype based rendering.  Only the renderer is licensed.  Maya is only licensed when an interactive session is opened, and Qube will never open an interactive session (it doesn't know how to do so).

As far as a vrscene stand-alone submission UI:  Aside from this one, we've only had one other request for such a feature.  It is on our roadmap, but it's fairly low in priority, simply because there hasn't been a very compelling case to create one.  That said, this makes for a second request which will bump it up in priority. In the mean time, a generic "cmdrange" submission UI will render a vrscene file.  That said, I can understand that populating the "cmdrange"  submission UI by hand may be tedious, especially if you don't have developers on staff to script the population of the generic submission UI for repeated use.

To summarize:  Maya does not use a license for rendering, so there is no need (at least when it comes to licensing) to render vrscene files - simply render from Maya with Render Globals set to use Vray through the Maya Batchrender or Maya Render in-app tools.  Only vray licenses will be consumed.

PS: Qube can also keep track of the number of vray licenses in use so you will never overrun your license allocation, regardless of the number of jobs wanting to use the license.  See http://docs.pipelinefx.com/display/QUBE/System-Wide+Resource+Tracking for more info.