Mental Ray Standalone FAQ

• 1 Mental Ray Standalone FAQ
  • 1.1 Is Mental Ray Standalone supported by Deadline?
  • 1.2 Can I submit a sequence of MI files that each contain one frame, or must I submit a single MI file that contains all the frames?
  • 1.3 When rendering a single MI file that contains all the frames, the frame range I tell Deadline to render doesn't match up with the files that are actually rendered.
  • 1.4 Mental Ray is printing out an error that is causing Deadline to fail the render, but when I render from the command line outside of Deadline, the error is still printed out, but the render finishes successfully.
  • 1.5 After a frame is rendered, Deadline takes a long time releasing the task before it moves on to another. What's going on?

Is Mental Ray Standalone supported by Deadline?

Yes.

Can I submit a sequence of MI files that each contain one frame, or must I submit a single MI file that contains all the frames?

Deadline supports both methods.

When rendering a single MI file that contains all the frames, the frame range I tell Deadline to render doesn't match up with the files that are actually rendered.

When submitting a single MI file that contains all the frames, make sure the Input MI File Start Frame option is set to the first frame that is in the MI file. This value is used to offset the frame range being passed to the mental ray renderer.

Mental Ray is printing out an error that is causing Deadline to fail the render, but when I render from the command line outside of Deadline, the error is still printed out, but the render finishes successfully.

By default, Deadline fails a Mental Ray job whenever it prints out an error. However, you can configure the Mental Ray plugin to ignore certain error codes, which are printed out alongside the error in the error lob.

After a frame is rendered, Deadline takes a long time releasing the task before it moves on to another. What's going on?

This can occur when a single MI file that contains all the frames is submitted to Deadline. Try exporting your frames to a sequence of MI files (one per frame) and submit the sequence of MI files to Deadline instead.