Licensing of satellite rendering

User Guide > General > Installation and Licensing > Installing mental ray for Maya satellite >

For more details about licensing of Maya, see Who should use this chapter.

Your version of Maya determines how many networked CPUs running satellite-enabled mental ray standalone can participate in a render:

Maya Complete – 2 additional networked CPUs
Maya Unlimited – 8 additional networked CPUs

For standalone licenses, the use of mental ray for Maya with satellite can only be initiated from the specified host for which your received your Maya key. The workstation can distribute mental ray for Maya rendering to either two or eight slave CPUs depending on your license.

For networked licenses, use of the functionality is slightly more flexible.

Depending on the type of Maya license you purchased, you additionally have either a mental ray for Maya Complete or mental ray for Maya Unlimited line item in your license. (These line items listed in the license file define separately licensed features under a overall Maya license.) For networked license setups, the license running Maya and the license running mental ray for Maya can be logged out separately allowing certain rendering tasks to be initiated remotely.

There are two possible cases when using mental ray for Maya with networked licenses:

(Interactive) With Maya running interactively on a workstation, initiate a mental ray for Maya render (either a single frame in the Render View, Batch render or command line render) on the workstation. The networked mental ray for Maya portion of your license is logged out. This allows the mental ray satellite slaves indicated in your rayhost file to participate in the render. The type of license you purchased controls whether you can use up to 2 or 8 mental ray standalone slave CPUs on other computers.
(Offline) If you launch a command line mental ray for Maya render from any computer that is not a Maya workstation (and the interactive version of Maya is not running), the mental ray for Maya license which allows the largest number of slaves (that is, Maya Unlimited) in your license server will be checked out first. The computer you launched the command from then becomes the master machine for mental ray for Maya satellite rendering.
NoteIf you have launched Maya but have not yet rendered with mental ray for Maya since the start of your interactive session, no mental ray for Maya line item from your networked license is checked out. You may therefore start a command line mental ray for Maya render from another host. This checks out the mental ray for Maya portion of the license, making it unavailable for any other workstation, including the workstation of the user who launched Maya.

This licensing behavior can be overridden using the -lic mc flag with the Render -r mr command. Render -r mr -lic mc attempts to check the mental ray for Maya Complete line item within the license first, and then the Unlimited line item within the license if a Complete line item is not available.

For more details on mental ray rendering, see the Rendering sections of the Maya Help (for example, Rendering), as well as the mental ray reference included with the Maya Help.