Animation Lab

Overview

The Animation Lab is a special-purpose lab, intended for the use of students enrolled in the animation course sequence. It is located in Sieg Hall 329.

Hardware

  • 6 Dell Precision 390 desktops
    (8GB RAM, dual 2.0GHz CPU, NVIDIA Quadro 3450 video)
  • 6 Dell Precision T3400n desktops
    (12GB RAM, dual 2.8GHz CPU, NVIDIA Quadro FX 580 video)
  • 10 Dell Precision T3500 desktops
    (12GB or 24GB RAM, dual 2.8GHz CPU,NVIDIA Quadro 2000 video)

Installed Software

All animation-lab desktops are equipped with the following software packages, in addition to what is installed on other instructional-lab desktops:

  • Adobe CS3 Master Collection (Acrobat Pro, After Effects, Dreamweaver, Encore, Fireworks, Flash, Illustrator, InDesign, Photoshop, Premiere Pro, and Soundbooth)
  • Autodesk Entertainment Creation Suite Ultimate 2013 (3ds Max, Composite, Maya, MotionBuilder, Mudbox, and Softimage)
  • Autodesk Maya 2012
  • Eclipse
  • PyMel
  • Unity
  • VLC

Additionally, the lab has one license for Adobe CS5 Production Premium, installed on mahsha and two licenses of ZBrush 4, installed on nebbish and fish.

The Animation Lab's Renderfarm

The animation lab has a group of machines, collectively called the &qout;renderfarm" that can be used to render images, offloading that task from student desktops. At present, there are twenty-eight (28) render nodes available locally, with more nodes available, via Amazon Web Services, during peak usage.

Information on preparing and using the renderfarm can be found in this section.

Renderfarm Job Control via Maya

Pixar employees have written a Maya plugin which allows one to submit render jobs from inside the Maya application. Users must install the plugin files themselves. The setup process is simple and must be done only once (twice if the user is using both versions of Maya installed in the animation lab).

The steps for installation of the plugin are as follows:

  1. Terminate the Maya application, if you have not already done so.
  2. Determine which version of Maya - 2012 or 2013 - you wish to use for the plugin installation. VERSION in the following steps will either be "2012-x64" or "2013-x64".
  3. Visit drummond.cs.washington.edu/tractor and download these three files: TractorRenderSpool.png, shelf_Tractor.mel, and tractorSpoolForMaya.py.
  4. Copy the TractorRenderSpool.png file to your My Documents/maya/VERSION/prefs/icons folder.
  5. Copy the shelf_Tractor.mel file to your My Documents/maya/VERSION/prefs/shelves folder.
  6. Copy the tractorSpoolForMaya.py file to your My Documents/maya/VERSION/scripts folder.

If you are using both installed versions of Maya, you will need to perform these steps a second time, but this time, the install paths should reference the other version of Maya.

Once installed, the "Tractor Spool For Maya" plugin can be accessed from the "Tractor" shelf in Maya.

File and Project Paths

All resources (textures, images, etc.) that are part of a shot must be place in an area that is available to all renderfarm clients. The paths to those resources in your Maya files must be formed in a platform-neutral and consistent manner.

The files that make up your shots must be located on the animation lab fileserver - tromso.cs.washington.edu in one of the following areas:

  /projects/instr/production1
  /projects/instr/production4
  /projects/instr/production5
  /projects/instr/capstone1
  /projects/instr/capstone2
  /projects/instr/capstone3
and the file paths to those resources - you set this in your Maya file - should look like this:
  //cseexec/cs/unix/projects/instr/production1
  //cseexec/cs/unix/projects/instr/production4
  //cseexec/cs/unix/projects/instr/production5
  //cseexec/cs/unix/projects/instr/capstone1
  //cseexec/cs/unix/projects/instr/capstone2
  //cseexec/cs/unix/projects/instr/capstone3
 
respectively. The destination folder for images and other resources generated on the renderfarm must also be located on one of the partitions on tromso.cs.washington.edu. This path syntax must be used consistently in your Maya files, and is independent of the renderfarm client's operating system. (While all of the render nodes are, at present, Linux-based, we could add Windows-based renderfarm client nodes at some point, and if your paths are formed consistently and correctly, your shots will render on any of them.)

Resources located on machines other than tromso.cs.washington.edu, including animation lab desktops, are not available to the renderfarm. In specific, paths which begin with Windows drive letters:

  O:
  Z:
  C:
will not work, and those paths must be corrected prior to rendering.

Using The Renderfarm

Pixar's Tractor software accepts render tasks from users, distributes them to available renderfarm nodes, and allows the user to track and interact with running render tasks. Tasks are submitted to the renderfarm through the "Tractor Spool for Maya" plugin in the Maya application, and tracked with a web-based interface.

Sending Tasks to the Renderfarm

Tasks - whether one frame or one hundred frames - are submitted to the renderfarm through the "Tractor Spool for Maya" plugin, located on the "Tractor" shelf in the Maya application. The plugin window looks like this (see below).

Two or three of the selectable items in this window will need to be set by the user:

  1. The value of "Tractor Engine Name" must be set to "tractor-engine".
  2. The value of "Style" must be set to "Remote".
  3. By default, the Maya renderer is used on the renderfarm. If you would like to use the "mental ray" renderer, the value of "Renderer" must be set to "Mental Ray".

Other rendering parameters - frame range, output file type, etc. - can be set from within Maya, in "Window -> Rendering Editors -> Render Settings".

Monitoring Tasks on the Renderfarm

The "Tractor" renderfarm management system has a Web interface, accessible from the following link: http://tractor-monitor.cs.washington.edu/tractor/dashboard/tv/. The initial screen - after a little tractor-themed load script - looks like this:

Type your CSE username into the "Username" box and select the "Login" button. (No password is needed at this time.) You'll be taken to the main "Tractor" window, shown below.

The three icons in the top left of the window allow the user to move between job status, blade status, and preferences. Selecting one of the tasks from the "job status" view will bring up information about that job on the right side of the window. Graph nodes can be single- or double-clicked to bring up frame information and the logfile for that frame.

The "blade status" view is displayed by selecting the middle of the three icons described above.

Each machine in the renderfarm is shown here. The "Slot..." column refers to the number of concurrent render tasks a renderfarm machine can handle.

Misbehaving render tasks can be diagnosed, restarted, or deleted from this interface. Should problems with the renderfarm persist, please contact CSE Support.

Last changed Mon, 2012-09-24 15:54