Sep & Oct ‘17 Render Farm Software Update Roundup

For the past two months, our developers have been working tirelessly to update our renderBeamer plugin for some of our supported 3d programs. We’re again introducing features and fixes that we have found as well as those that have been requested by our partners. You can see the recap below of what went down for September and October 2017.

3Ds Max

• Added warnings/prompts about no support for Mental Ray (3ds max 2018 and up), support for CXR format with Corona render still shots, and post process effects with V-Ray
• Render to fields option is now disabled by default
• Added Photon map support for still shot mode and render as is mode
• Fixed RealFlow issue with empty caches paths
• Added reload scene after crash feature
• Fixed issue with *.exr files connected as *.ifl sequence asset type
• Disabled “separate render folders” switch for V-Ray frame buffer output (RGB/Alpha)
• Extended plugin setup for strips mode – now you can render V-Ray strips with every GI configuration, LC modes now create GI caching jobs
• Added full support for multi-camera scenes with all renderers (Mental Ray, V-Ray, Corona) and all possible render modes
• Improved plugin GUI layout for displays with lower resolutions
• Disabled 32bit V-Ray raw exr. Now exr internal format setup will have the same settings as the original scene
• Fixed disabling render region with V-Ray
• Fixed disabling Render Mask (now its set to “None”)
• Added prompt about “Corona render selected mode”
• Added check/uncheck for all cameras when setting multi-cam scene

Maya

• Added support for Shotgun plugin
• Added prompt about no support for the external renderer – Mental Ray – for Maya 2017 and up
• Added support for $MAYA_PROJECTS_DIR variable used in the assets’ paths
• Fixed ‘no renderable layer set’ prompt (when additional layers were used in referenced scenes)
• Adding “>” char was fixed for stacked assets
• Empty input boxes for Mental Ray texture nodes are being ignored
• Support for Xgen Animation Guide cache (.abc)
• Added support for xgmSplineCache Xgen node
• Locked attributes are getting unlocked
• Minor adjustments added to Mental Ray proxy handling

Cinema 4D

• Added support for multi camera scenes with tiled rendering (for stills)
• Blocked non-renderable high resolution formats (resolution 65k and higher)
• Fixed issue with custom C4D installation paths
• Support for X-Particles
• Added a prompt for X-Particles about settings configuration

Lightwave

• Fixed support for IES lights assets (Lightwave internal & DPKits)
• renderBeamer starts automatically after installation now

MODO

• Added support for vismat assets

Blender

• Changed plugin workflow – now the plugin will send unpacked scene instead of packing & assets relinking
• Added prompt about “Auto Run Python Script” when using custom scripts in scene

Rhino

• Fixed the issue when sending crash logs
• Added prompt about “Auto Run Python Script” when using custom scripts in scene

VUE

• Both R2 & R3 are now installed and fully supported on our farm for VUE 2016

Corona

• You can now render projects using Corona 1.7 on our farm

RenderBeamer

• Added an alternative port option for main connection – in the settings panel and connection test panel. This is to fix connection issues with some 3rd party security software incorrectly blocking beamer main connection.

If you use any of the of softwares above, feel free to take these updates out for a test run. And for those that haven’t registered yet, click this link and get test credits, on the house!

Got requests for our next batch of updates? Leave us a message at garage@garagefarm.net or give us a shoutout on Facebook!

Happy rendering from all of us at GarageFarm.NET!

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