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Render Arnold .ass files on Deadline Cloud - Deadline Cloud

Render Arnold .ass files on Deadline Cloud

The arnold_standalone_render job bundle on the GitHub website renders Arnold .ass (Arnold Scene Source) files using the kick command-line renderer that ships 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. This sample is useful for batch rendering pre-exported Arnold scenes without a full Maya session.

The bundle includes a sample cornell.0001.ass file in the scene/ directory. You can also download additional learning scenes from the Arnold for Maya learning scenes page on the Autodesk website, or export .ass files from Maya. To automate the export step, use the maya_arnold_ass_export_render bundle on the GitHub website.

To run this bundle, you need:

  • A queue with the kick binary available through a queue environment. The bundle's CondaPackages parameter defaults to maya-mtoa, which provides kick. On service-managed fleets, the deadline-cloud conda channel provides this package. For a specific MtoA version, build a custom package. For more information, see the maya-mtoa conda recipe on the GitHub website.

  • A Linux fleet associated with the queue. The job template specifies attr.worker.os.family: linux as a host requirement.

Submit the bundle:

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