Maya 2009 Unlimited Standalone License

[p.8.n]

I have a question about satellite rendering via Mental Ray in Maya 2009. I understand I have access to 8 cpu's via my standalone copy. Is this referring to the number of physical sockets/cpu's or the number of cores on a single socket/cpu? Thanks in advance for any clarification. 😄

[DouglasLauritsen]

Satellite licensing is per CPU. You can find a description of the licensing for various rendering options here.

[p.8.n]

Thanks for the information. I appreciate you taking the time to reply. I am investigating building another PC to use as a small render farm. There would be 2 CPUs with 8 cores each. Its an AMD Magny-Cours 6000 line chip. I would like to use this PC solely for Mental Ray render passes. I am willing to pay for the questions regarding this. Could you please tell me if someone at Autodesk Support would be familiar with this CPU to provide any heads up considerations?

[david.lau]

I would upgrade to Maya 2011 and use the Mayabatch licensing for mental ray.   This would include 5 systems regardless of the # of CPUs.  Also, you can use Backburner to submit the jobs.  It is a queue manager that is included in Maya 2010/2011.

mental ray Satellite is actually better for IPR rendering (single frame) for previewing.  If you submit a render job via Satellite, I have seen on occasion longer render times because it needs to send/receive buckets of info back and forth between the master and slave computers.   You may have noticed when your use IPR and you have selected mental ray, it renders 1 square at a time (bucket).  That bucket is what is being sent to the slave computers.

Mayabatch is basically a full install of Maya.  Using Mayabatch is basically running Maya without the UI so that you can render using mental ray.

[p.8.n · Accepted solution]

Thanks Dave, for not answering my question. I admit I'm willing to pay for a support call, you smell blood in the water and go for the hard sell. No thanks. Your approach is nuanced, however it suggests my version of Maya is substandard, not the best way to go. I imagine in a year you'll be using the same pitch on another person. Maya 2012 will handle the failings of Maya 2011 so much better, etc. Additionally the classic lemon pic attached to my user id is adorable. Odd how it only showed up when I copied the text from this page into Writer, my way of recording this information. I guess that explains why I don't recall picking it out. Good times. Douglas, thanks for your help.

[DouglasLauritsen]

Hi,

I asked Dave to respond on this thread as I am not a Maya expert but understand that the node type of render farm is a better option than satellite. I asked Dave to respond to you based his on knowledge and experience with Maya and its rendering options. My belief is that you are better served by setup and configuration rather than a per-incident support call. It is not my intention to market to you an upsell.

Currently the forum community for Maya users is on the Area. You may be interested in checking out that forum and see what users are recommending for farms and configurations. You will find a preference for node farms in this community.

I am sorry for any dissatisfaction I may have caused you.

Douglas