From: jon <jon@(email surpressed)>
Subject: After Effects and Rush
   Date: Mon, 13 Feb 2006 13:01:27 -0500

Thanks

/jason/
On Feb 13, 2006, at 10:01 AM, jon wrote:

[posted to rush.general]

We are trying to set up our Maya render farm to support After Effects too. Unfortunately, our IT guy says that we need a full licensed copy on every render node (and we aren't budgeted for that). Has anyone ever got After Effects to work with Rush as a render-only install?

Thanks

--
Jason Lopes
Technical Administrator
Klasky Csupo, Inc.
(323) 468-2696
jlopes@(email surpressed)

yeah you don't need a license for each AE render. I wagualy remember
that you can chose "render only" or something when you install it.
Either way it's perfectly legal to install it even if you have only
one license and then use the AErender.exe to render with (which Rush
points too).
Just remember that certain plugins (the ones that doesn't come with
AE) might require a separete render license. RE:Vision for instance
has one license for the user and another that is required for
AErender.

best of luck
stefan andersson


On 13 Feb 2006 18:03:48 -0000, Jason Lopes <jlopes@(email surpressed)> wrote:
> [posted to rush.general]
>
> You can use render only on the farm... Thats how I am set up where I
> am.  AFX V 6
> /jason/
> On Feb 13, 2006, at 10:01 AM, jon wrote:
>
> > [posted to rush.general]
> >
> > We are trying to set up our Maya render farm to support After
> > Effects too. Unfortunately, our IT guy says that we need a full
> > licensed copy on every render node (and we aren't budgeted for
> > that). Has anyone ever got After Effects to work with Rush as a
> > render-only install?
> >
> > Thanks
>
> --
> Jason Lopes
> Technical Administrator
> Klasky Csupo, Inc.
> (323) 468-2696
> jlopes@(email surpressed)
>
>
>
>
>
>


--
stockholm postproduction | http://www.stopost.se

And just so everyone knows, this is one question I can't really answer
because I don't know how AE licenses there stuff. I'm on some kind
of developer program with them, so I'm licensed in a different way
from regular customers.

But I thought I'd add my "two cents":

Best thing to do is ask the folks at Adobe if there's any doubt;
tell them you have workstations and a farm, and only need to use the GUI
on workstations; the farm would only ever be running the 'aerender' command.
They should be able to help you so that you only purchase the licenses you need.

I'd back that up with some actual empirical testing to verify you don't
need the licenses for the kind of rendering you're doing.

In my case I do the full installs on all machines, just so I can be sure
'everything is there' so I can pull up the GUI if needed to test on a single
farm machine that might be acting weird.

My philosophy with installing all 3rd party software is to install 'everything'
because disk space is cheap, and it's better to have all machines have the
same config, then to have seperate installs for the farm and workstations,
to avoid problems later that might only show up because of a 'render only' install.

Regarding the licenses, I imagine both the full installs and render only installs
consume licenses similarly; if you do a render only operation on a machine
with a full install, I would assume it wouldn't use up a GUI license.


Stefan Andersson wrote:

yeah you don't need a license for each AE render. I wagualy remember
that you can chose "render only" or something when you install it.
Either way it's perfectly legal to install it even if you have only
one license and then use the AErender.exe to render with (which Rush
points too).
Just remember that certain plugins (the ones that doesn't come with
AE) might require a separete render license. RE:Vision for instance
has one license for the user and another that is required for
AErender.

--
Greg Ercolano, erco@(email surpressed)
Rush Render Queue, http://seriss.com/rush/
Tel: (Tel# suppressed)
Cel: (Tel# suppressed)
Fax: (Tel# suppressed)

thanks.

Jon Block
Picturemill

Jason Lopes wrote:

You can use render only on the farm... Thats how I am set up where I am. AFX V 6

/jason/
On Feb 13, 2006, at 10:01 AM, jon wrote:

jon wrote:

[posted to rush.general]

That's encouraging, when we tried a test here, after effects wouldn't start rendering (unlike a full install, which would start without problems). Do you have any tips for setup that I might have missed?

	I'd be curious to see what errors you're getting.

	Possibly it's just something simple, like a PATH setting.

	IIRC, the 'render only' install has a slightly different pathname
	from the full install, eg. on a mac:

 RENDER ONLY: /Applications/Adobe After Effects 6.5 RE
FULL INSTALL: /Applications/Adobe After Effects 6.5

	..at least, I think that's what the 'RE' is for.

	So for example, if some of your MACs have the RE install, and some have
	the full install, you would need to modify the PATH setting at the top
	of the submit-afterfx script to look in both directories, eg:

$ENV{PATH} .= ($G::iswindows) ? ";c:/Program Files/Adobe/After Effects 6.0/Support Files"    # WIN
                              : ":/Applications/Adobe After Effects 6.5".                    # MAC (FULL)
                                ":/Applications/Adobe After Effects 6.5 RE";                 # MAC (RENDER)

	..this way, when the script runs on any machine, it will first try
	to use the full install version, then falls back to the render only
	directory if the full install isn't found.

--
Greg Ercolano, erco@(email surpressed)
Rush Render Queue, http://seriss.com/rush/
Tel: (Tel# suppressed)
Cel: (Tel# suppressed)
Fax: (Tel# suppressed)

jon wrote:

[posted to rush.general]

That's encouraging, when we tried a test here, after effects wouldn't start rendering (unlike a full install, which would start without problems). Do you have any tips for setup that I might have missed?

thanks.

Jon Block
Picturemill

yeah...what Greg said.

;)

Vic

Victor DiMichina wrote:

Also, before pulling your hair out getting the whole farm to render, try it out with a single command line render from the local machine. If you can take a project, and execute it with the aerender command, then you can render it with Rush as soon as the path variables are set up properly in your submit-afterfx.pl script.

	Yes, definitely good advice there.

	All the rush submit scripts show an 'Executing:' line, which in most cases
	you can just cut+paste into a DOS or unix shell prompt to test from the command line.

	One exception is with the older 'submit-maya', where little mel scripts are
	generated on the fly, but usually you can copy+paste the mel from
	the log file into a tmp file, and test that way.

	The newer 'submit-maya6' script is superseding the older script, making use
	of the new "Render -r [mr|sw|..]" syntax (new as of Maya 6.x, and compatible
	with maya6 and up), which no longer needs the on-the-fly mel scripts,
	and simplifies things a great deal.

	I have a new 'submit-maya6-tile' script (beta testing) that uses this newer
	'Render -r' syntax for *tiled* rendering:
	http://www.seriss.com/rush-current/submit-maya6-tile/index.html

	Contact me directly if you'd like to test it. It will be in the next release.

	Works for both maya sw and 'mayatomr' plugin rendering.
	(does not currently support 'mray standalone' rendering, yet)

--
Greg Ercolano, erco@(email surpressed)
Rush Render Queue, http://seriss.com/rush/
Tel: (Tel# suppressed)
Cel: (Tel# suppressed)
Fax: (Tel# suppressed)

jon wrote:

[posted to rush.general]

We are trying to set up our Maya render farm to support After Effects too. Unfortunately, our IT guy says that we need a full licensed copy on every render node (and we aren't budgeted for that). Has anyone ever got After Effects to work with Rush as a render-only install?

Thanks

Hope that helps.
Vic

Victor DiMichina wrote:

We are trying to set up our Maya render farm to support After Effects too. Unfortunately, our IT guy says that we need a full licensed copy on every render node (and we aren't budgeted for that). Has anyone ever got After Effects to work with Rush as a render-only install?

Thanks

We use network imaging, so every single machine for workstations as well as render farms has the exact same image on their hard drives. Full installs of Maya, Shake, and After Effects. Since Maya, Shake, and AE offer unlimited rendering, and Rush only calls up the command line renderer for each respective program, there is no conflict whatsoever. As long as you have enough licenses for the full version of the app that your artists use, you'll be fine. In an answer to your question, however, I can say YES we have had Rush working with a render only install. In the end of the day, Rush simply calls up the command line app "aerender."

	Yes, definitely it all comes down to a command line invocation.
	So for instance, shake GUI licenses shouldn't be needed for rush rendering.
	(Unless they've changed their licensing since 1999, shake licenses the GUI
	separately from the command line, the gui being a bit more expensive then
	command line licenses. With macs, maybe licensing is 'free' somehow)

	IIRC, one of the cable companies had an AE issue where a few machines weren't rendering
	a particular scene correctly because the plugins were failing. They kept reinstalling AE
	(render only) and the plugins to no avail.

	Turned out to be those machines had the render only installs.. all the working machines
	had full installs. When they installed the full AE software and plugins, it went fine.
	I think the problem was some plugin they were using needed the full AE install. I'm afraid
	I don't know specifics, as there was no followup analysis by the customer once things
	were working. It did seem to be plugin specific. It's quite possible the plugin was
	hardwired for a non-"RE" path, and could maybe have been fixed by administering the
	plugin. Hard to say.
	
--
Greg Ercolano, erco@(email surpressed)
Rush Render Queue, http://seriss.com/rush/
Tel: (Tel# suppressed)
Cel: (Tel# suppressed)
Fax: (Tel# suppressed)

thanks to everyone!

Jon Block