Submit Maya BatchRender (mr) & expand

[pinkwerks]

Hi, in the GUI, when I submit a Maya BatchRender (mr) job there are a couple of annoyances.  The first one is, that the variable "%(mayaExe)s" in the CmdTemplate is filled with 'render' when it should be 'Render', at least on linux.  What file controls this, so I can fix it?

Also I'd like to add a '-rt' field for 'render threads' - Is that the same file as above?

Lastly, when I try to submit Maya Renders from within maya via the Qube! Menu the 'expand' flag doesn't seem to take... so even though I have lots of machines idle, all the renders go to one machine only.  This is what lead me to the above problem, as I'm trying to render on all the machines, of course.

thanks,
pink

[Scot Brew]

Hi Pink,

All of these items can be addressed by either direct GUI actions or modification of the published scripts.

As of QubeGUI 5.4, one can use the "Set Defaults" button at the bottom of the submission dialog to have it store off the preferences for that user for a particular jobtype.  This method can be used for the mayaExe parameter any any others that you want to set.

Alternatively, all of the QubeGUI submission scripts are located in the simplecmds/ directory.  One can open up the mayabatch.py script and edit the default value for the "mayaExe" parameter.  The mayabatch simplecmd is slightly different than the standard one as it exposes interfaces for about a dozen maya-compliant renderers by parsing their "help" text directly.

For "-rt" (render threads) option, there already exists an option "-renderThreads" in the "Other" parameter section of the submission dialog.

You should be able to set the "expand" flag.  If not able to do so, then you can alternatively specify the job "CPUs" field to have it run as many render processes as you desire for the job.

Scot

[pinkwerks]

Thanks for the reply, Scot.

So I'm going to edit 'simplecmds/mayabatch.py', as I don't want to have to educate all of my artists, I'd rather it just works - which brings up a deployment question.

If I change the default scripts (mayabatch.py) & want it to live on our shared server, is there some kind environment variable or qb.conf pragma that will tell the gui to look for shared simplecmds in a global directory as some kind of override?

To start, I've copied the /usr/local/pfx/qube directory to our server and I've pointed qb_directory to the new location on our server, in qb.conf.  However, when the GUI starts up, it makes a link in /tmp to the /usr/local/pfx/qube/bin/simplecmds and not the directory defined by qb_directory.  I could copy the file to every machine but I'd rather centralize administration.

By the way, consider this a patch - you need to change the end of line 1356 of mayabatch.py to read 'default=Render' instead of 'default=render'.

thanks!
-p

[Scot Brew]

We have a feature for you.  In the QubeGUI 5.4, you can specify a search path for SimpleCmds.  Add a network path there and you will only have to update that simplecmd file in one location.

In addition there is a studioDefaults option that lets you load in a default set of preferences before loading in a user's preferences.  That can be used to make easy changes down the road to the recommended studio defaults.  This option can also be specified from the commandline.

(The fix for changing "render" to "Render" will be made.  Thank you for the suggestion)

[jturner]

I'm trying to do something similar - is there a way to specify additional search paths for simplecmds without using the QubeGUI? I don't want to have to edit the preferences for every single user. You mention studio defaults, which might be what I'm looking for, but how are these set?

[pinkwerks]

I second this.  Does 'worker_template_path' work for this?

[Scot Brew]

The "worker_template_path" parameter stored in the qb.conf is for use with the jobtype search path and is independent of the QubeGUI studio defaults.  The QubeGUI studio defaults can be specified when launching the QubeGUI from the commandline or by setting a preference in the User Preferences of the QubeGUI.