Overview
Whether you are a student enrolled in VM261: Computer Animation, VM363: Advanced Computer Animation, VM470: Advanced New Media Projects, or a VMA class requiring you to render out an image sequence/animation, you may find that both time and computational power are quite valuable resources. Perhaps you rely on your own machine, or at other times you may find yourself needing additional computational power.
As one option, we have the Render Farm (On-Campus/Off-Campus). But perhaps the Render Farm's queue is busy or is insufficient for your rendering needs. Bearing this in mind, this article will introduce to you the Emerging Media Lab's Overnight Rendering Policy.
Making the Request
When making your request, please give us at least a day's worth of notice, if possible. This is to anticipate usage for the evening, which will affect how workstations will need to/can be distributed per requesting student. In order to create an Overnight Rendering Request:
- Please email postproduction@emerson.edu regarding the Overnight Rendering request. Please include in that email:
- What Render Engine you will be using (i.e. Maya Arnold, Maya Software, etc.)
- How many Total Frames you will need, and Frame Range (i.e. frames 50-90), if applicable.
- The Image Format of the frames (PNG, JPEG, etc.)
- The desired resolution or Image Size Preset (720p, 1080p, etc.)
- (If applicable) Name(s) of the camera(s) that will need to be rendered.
You may find this language reflects Maya's Render Settings, please be sure to double-check them.
Students enrolled in computer animation courses and relevant academic coursework will take priority. Requests will generally be taken on a case-by-case basis otherwise, accounting for general usage of the lab's machines.
Preparation & Setup
Please ensure your scene is ready and all set for rendering. Please refer to the Rendering in Maya article, making sure your scene renders as a sequence with the correct enumeration, image format, render camera, and image size preset (720p, 1080p, etc.). If possible, please test this beforehand on either one of our workstations during a prior checkout or on your own machine.
Please stop by to the EML during your reservation time to set up your project, once again checking your render settings and scene are setup correctly before your project is left overnight. Once this is done, the project will be left to render overnight up to opening the next day, with a cut-off time an hour after opening.
When setting up your project to render, you will be using Render Sequence. There, set the Alternate Output File Location to a directory on the Bin, that you can access later on-campus or while using Emerson VPN. If you are outputting your images to a project that you've queued up on the Render Farm, make sure to create a separate sub-folder in the images folder to sort by which workstation rendered those out. In the event, the farm begins rendering your project, you do not want to risk re-rendering your frames needlessly within the root images folder.
From here, you can check up on your rendered frames on the Bin, as long as you have emerson.edu/eduroam network access, whether on-campus or using the VPN.
Closing Notes
With that, you should be all set to request and render your project overnight within the EML. For any questions, please do not hesitate to reach out to postproduction@emerson.edu or to contact an on-shift lab assistant during our hours, please call the EML Annex phone at (617) 824-3967. With that, best of luck and happy rendering!