Configuration

mental ray standalone

If you want to render Maya scenes (.mb or .ma) from within Maya or batch render with Maya, you need to install mental ray for Maya on all master machines and mental ray standalone on all slave machines.

If you want to render native NVIDIA (.mi) scenes from the command line using the mental ray standalone renderer, you need to install mental ray on all master and slave machines.

NoteIf you have multiple versions of mental ray standalone installed (not recommended), each must have their own TCP port number in the services file to avoid conflict.

For example:

mi-raysat2013    7413/tcp
adskmr381       38010/tcp
mi-raysat2012    7412/tcp
adskmr391       39010/tcp

mental ray for Maya Satellite

If you want to render Maya scenes (.mb or .ma) from within Maya or batch render with Maya, you need to install mental ray for Maya on all master machines and mental ray for Maya Satellite on all slave machines. You can use up to four slave machines, with up to four processors each and an unlimited number of cores. For more information about installing mental ray for Maya Satellite, see the Installation and Licensing guide.

You can’t render native NVIDIA (.mi) scenes from the command line using the mental ray for Maya Satellite; you must use mental ray standalone.

Configuration files

To specify which network render slave machines a master uses, mental ray for Maya and mental ray standalone use different configuration files:

mental ray for Maya and mental ray for Maya Satellite use a file called maya.rayhosts
mental ray standalone uses a file called .rayhosts

maya.rayhosts

mental ray for Maya and mental ray for Maya Satellite look for maya.rayhosts in the following directories:

user’s Maya preference directory
user’s Maya application directory
user’s home directory

To configure maya.rayhosts files, see Set up a master machine with mental ray standalone (method 2).