From: Greg Ercolano <erco@(email surpressed)>
Subject: Maya 7.0 bug with fix
   Date: Tue, 06 Sep 2005 16:15:06 -0700

This is Maya 7.0 specific.

DESCRIPTION
-----------
In submit-maya6, when you specify "Renderer: mentalray", and
set the "Image Directory" to some path, it correctly writes the
images to that directory under Maya 6.x, but not in Maya 7.0.


     "Render -r mr -rd /some/path/images ..
             -----     -----------------
               |               |
               |               Directory to write images
               |
               Use mentalray for rendering

When used in this context, Maya 7.0 is apparently ignoring
the -rd setting.

I reported this as a bug to Alias, and they confirmed.

Alias also came back with a simple fix, a replacement .xml file
(see below link) which fixes the problem.

SOLUTION
--------
Alias said it was OK to pass this fix on to others using Maya 7.0,
so here's the fix:

    1) Download the following mrRenderer.xml file by right clicking on the link
       and choosing "Save Target As..":
       <A HREF="http://seriss.com/rush/patches/102.42/mrRenderer.xml";>http://seriss.com/rush/patches/102.42/mrRenderer.xml</A>

       Save this file in place of your existing Maya 7.0 "mrRenderer.xml" file.
       Depending on your platform, the pathname will be:

       LINUX: /usr/aw/maya7.0/bin/rendererDesc/mrRenderer.xml
         OSX: /Applications/Alias/maya7.0/Maya.app/Contents/bin/rendererDesc/mrRenderer.xml
         WIN: C:\Program Files\Alias\Maya7.0\bin\rendererDesc\mrRenderer.xml

       I advise you first rename out the old file (eg. "mrRenderer.xml.orig")
       before saving the new one.

    2) Retry the render.
       If it works, copy the change to your other machines
       so that all will render correctly.

	Also, this is another item that might be relevant for those of you
	using "submit-maya.pl" script (which uses the older syntax, and implements
	mental ray rendering using MEL commands to invoke the Mayatomr plugin.)

	Thanks to the folks at Guru for this submit-maya.pl mod:

* * *

Hi Greg,

	When trying to render to a different directory, these commands don't work
	anymore for Maya 7 for some reason. They did in Maya 6.

// Image dir specified? Use it.
if ( "$opt{ImageDirectory}" != "-" )
{
    if ( chdir( "$opt{ImageDirectory}" ) != 0 )
    { error("chdir($opt{ImageDirectory}): failed\\n"); }

    // Force Mayatomr to use our ImageDirectory. -erco 02/09/04
    setAttr "mentalrayGlobals.outp" -type "string" "$opt{ImageDirectory}";
}

	I've found that if you use the workspace command instead, the specified
	image directory is used properly.

// the above chdir commands dont work anymore in v7 for some reason
workspace -rt "images" "$opt{ImageDirectory}";

--
Bryan Huo
guru Animation