This is a general guide on how to use Hrothgar to render for the On-A-Slant project. The later versions of the render farm are more user friendly than the original 2013 version but there are still some of those …rough edges.

Why 6? There was Maya 6.5, then Blender, Blender Cycles, Maya 2016, Maya 2016 w/MentalRay, and now Maya 2017 w/RenderMan.

To find information about what's currently rendering, visit http://hrothgar.cs.ndsu.nodak.edu. The main page shows which machines are presently rendering, including the frame, start time, and estimated progress.

This is a bit tricky and needs to be done in a specific manner for the renderer to find the proper files.

Step 1. Configure Maya 2017 Render settings.

Set Image Format under Renderman Render Controls to OpenEXR format

Configure the batch job to use the LocalQueue and set the number of frames per node equal to the number of frames you are going to export/render.

Step 2. Delete your project/renderman/textures folder so when you run the batch job you have only the necessary textures in the folder.

Step 3. Start the batch job and when the LocalQueue opens, stop all but the first three jobs.

When those three jobs have finished.

Step 4. Go to your renderman export folder. You should find a textures folder and a folder that is your job name + _ + date and time you started your export. Zip those two folders into a single zip file (hopefully not larger than 32GB or you have to do some fiddly things).

Next, log into Hrothgar via the renderer link (currently called 'manage'). If you don't have an account, contact support@cs.ndsu.edu.

1. Go to the Submit Job page.
2. Fill out the form with start frame, end frame, width, height, and frame rate.
3. Attach the zip file and submit the form.

After uploading and a good bit of waiting while the job is unzipped, the Job Status page should open showing the status of your render.

We have only 25 RenderMan licenses and we are currently using 22 of them, so choose your equipment wisely.

• RenderMan isn't the memory hog that Blender Cycles was and it seems to work fine with a minimum of 8GB.
• The more cores and faster the CPU clock the better.
• A static or reserved IP is recommended.
• GPU rendering is not supported as of RenderMan 21.2. — 2017/03/22 00:22

Render nodes are Debian or Red Hat based Linux machines. (I've tried Centos 7 and couldn't get it to work due to missing libraries.)

Sudo access to the machine is needed to install some specific applications, libraries, daemon scripts, and users. See Render Node Configuration

Render nodes transfer files via SSH and use RSA authentication in both directions. Be sure keys are properly installed and accepted by Hrothgar and the remote nodes.

Open port 12321/TCP on the render node.

There is a rather large package of Maya, RenderMan, and controlling daemon scripts that need to be copied over. Currently stored on Lab18.cs.

The standard configuration uses files in the /project/ghokanso/renderman directory.

Modify hostname in the daemon/DMRM/Config.pm file to the name/IP of the node machine.

The daemon script needs to be installed, configured, and started.

RenderMan license key needs to be installed.

New node needs to be added to Hrothgar.

Test node.