"Render region" from inside Maya Render Settings?

[halfstone]

I will routinely render my images and sequences from the command line, but when using school computers the PATH statements cannot be edited by students - requiring very long absolute paths for the renderer, the "-proj" flag, and the "im" flag.  I find that without hardwiring those paths into the batch scripts, the images wind up all over the network or the renderer fails. 

We're now rendering some very high-resolution images (>10,000 pixels) for large prints.  I'm writing some batch scripts to render regions at the command line - firing off four, six, or eight simultaneous renders on multiple machines to create render regions that can be stitched together in Photoshop ... 

I'm wondering if there is a way of embedding the "reg" command in the Render Settings window - basically rendering regions from within Maya, thus avoiding having to create strings in a batch script that are a million miles long.  

Can a Maya file be saved that has a render region embedded?  Can a region be rendered from within the package using the IPR (numerically; without using that little  crop icon in the ArnoldRender View) 

thanks

[sean.heasley]

Hi @halfstone 

I wanna make sure I'm understanding this right.

Basically you're wondering if you can set the render region command to be apart of the render settings so that when you render by default it will do a region instead of having to do it via script right?

I don't believe it can be added to the render settings window but you could make a custom script button that could handle this type of function if that workflow would help your process.

[sean.heasley]

Hi @halfstone 

Just wanted to check in to see how things were going. Are you still having this issue?

If your issue is resolved, please click Accept as Solution on the posts that helped you so others in the community can find them easily.

[halfstone · Accepted solution]

Thanks for the response and followup.  

I will routinely render at the command-line, so it's not a huge issue - but the way the network is set up where I teach, it's impossible to alter the PATH statements either directly or in a batch script - which makes these things exceedingly long and complicated.  We also use a muster render farm, which reads directly from the render settings. 

So the answer I received here is what I suspected - that "no", the "reg" flag is not included in the render settings, nor can it be added.  

I would be very interested in some direction as to how to use a script to create a custom render-settings window.  I have some knowledge of this, but it's not my forte and I'd have to slog through quite a bit to get it to work.  

[halfstone]

Hello, Sean - 

I guess 10 months is not too bad to respond, is it?  I must have missed the email notification that you had followed up on this question.  

So yeah, I'm still having the issue.  Years ago, it used to be part of the Render Settings window; it's easy enough to use the command line - what I was hoping to do was send a big, time consuming image up to our render farm using Muster; that will not (as far as I know) accept anything but an *.ma or *mb file.  

Maybe I can edit the *.ma.  Stay tuned.  And thanks - sorry it has taken so long to respond. 

[mspeer]

Hi!

@halfstone 

Just for your information, Sean is no longer here at Autodesk or the forums.