Microsoft KB Archive/161384

= Microsoft Knowledge Base =

Batch Rendering with Mental Ray on IRIX Platforms
Last reviewed: December 23, 1996

Article ID: Q161384

The information in this article applies to:


 * Softimage 3D for IRIX, versions 3.5, 3.51

SUMMARY
There are two methods for batch rendering with mental ray on IRIX platforms: the first uses the command soft -R, and the second uses the ray.irix5 executable. For both these rendering methods, ensure that the following options are selected when you save your scene:

 In the Render Setup dialog box, you must select mental ray as your Rendering Type. If you wish to render .mi files, in Render Setup, click Options, and from the dialog box that appears, select Output to File .  If you wish to create a .mi file for each frame, you must also select Output to File per Frame from the Options dialogue box. 

By default, .mi files are rendered to your home directory. To render them to another location, enter the explicit path when defining the name of the .mi file. For example, naming the file /usr/tmp/my.mi will create my.mi in the /usr/tmp directory.

Rendering with soft -R
  To see the usage for soft -R, in a winterm shell, type the command: soft -R. Depending on the Render Setup of your scene, rendering with the command soft -R will give you one of three results: a. If you selected Output to File per Frame, a single .mi file for each frame (again, as specified in the saved scene unless the -s     option with soft -R is used) will be created. b. If you have saved your scene without selecting Output to File, the process for rendering .pic files with mental ray begins when you enter the soft -R command. c. If you selected Output to File, the process creates a single .mi      file including all the frames to be rendered (as specified in the      saved scene unless the -s option with soft -R is used). This procedure shows you how to batch render an .mi file in smaller units if you do not have enough ram or hard drive space to render the complete scene:   Using jot, create a script file consisting of two line groups. The first line of each group runs the soft -R process using the -s option to render only a portion of the scene. The second line of each group runs the ray.exe process, rendering the .mi file created in the first line to a .pic file. In the following example there are three groups rendering a total of 30 frames from a scene named example in a database named test. The name of the .mi files generated in the first command (as defined by the scene s Render settings) is hello.mi. This example assumes that your scene was saved with at least 30 frames. 

$SI_LOCATION/3D/bin/soft $SI_LOCATION/3D/rsrc - R example -d test -s 1 10 1 $SI_LOCATION/3D/mental_ray/bin/ray.irix5 hello $SI_LOCATION/3D/bin/soft $SI_LOCATION/3D/rsrc - R example -d test -s 11 20 1 $SI_LOCATION/3D/mental_ray/bin/ray.irix5 hello $SI_LOCATION/3D/bin/soft $SI_LOCATION/3D/rsrc - R example -d test -s 21 30 1 $SI_LOCATION/3D/mental_ray/bin/ray.irix5 hello

Repeat the above script as many times as is necessary to complete your job, then complete the following steps: Save and close the script.

To make the file executable, in a winterm shell, type the command: chmod.

To run the script, enter the file name on the command line and press Enter.

Rendering With ray.irix5
To render .mi files to .pic files, run the command ray.irix5.

To batch render .mi files, you must run an executable file (create as described above). The following procedure assumes that your .mi files are located in /usr/tmp.

  In a winterm shell, type the following commands: cd /usr/tmp ls > render_me.jot jot render_me.jot </li> In the open jot window, paste the command ray.irix5 in front of each .mi name and then remove the .mi extension.</li> Save and close the file.</li> To make the file executable, you must type the command: chmod in a winterm shell.</li> Now you can run render_me.jot from the command line.</li></ol>