arnold_standalone_render

Arnold Standalone Render

Job summary

This job bundle renders Arnold .ass (Arnold Scene Source) files using the Arnold kick command-line renderer that comes with MtoA (Arnold for Maya).

Point it at a directory of .ass files with a naming pattern, and it renders each frame as a separate task distributed across workers.

Prerequisites

• A Deadline Cloud queue with a conda queue environment configured. The job's CondaPackages parameter defaults to maya-mtoa, which provides the kick binary. On service-managed fleets, the deadline-cloud channel provides this package. If you need a specific MtoA version, see the maya-mtoa conda recipe for building a custom package.
• A Linux fleet associated with the queue (the job specifies attr.worker.os.family: linux).

Getting sample .ass files

A sample cornell.0001.ass file is included in the scene/ directory.

You can download more from the Autodesk Arnold learning scenes page: Arnold Learning Scenes

You can also export .ass files from Maya: Arnold > Export Scene... or via MEL: arnoldExportAss -f "scene" -sf 1 -ef 100. See the maya_arnold_ass_export_render sample for a job that automates this export step.

Submitting the job

GUI submission

deadline bundle gui-submit arnold_standalone_render/

CLI submission

deadline bundle submit arnold_standalone_render/ \
    -p SceneDirectory=/path/to/ass_files \
    -p FilePattern=robot.####.ass \
    -p Frames=1-100 \
    -p OutputDir=./output

How it works

The job has a single step with a parameter space that creates one task per frame. Each task:

1. Locates the kick binary using the $MTOA environment variable, with a fallback to searching $CONDA_PREFIX.
2. Constructs the input path from SceneDirectory and FilePattern, replacing #### with the zero-padded frame number.
3. Runs kick -i <input> -o <output> to render the scene.
4. Outputs files named <OutputFilePrefix>.<frame>.exr.