A mental ray Render Garden with Maya 2008 in Mac OS X

This is my setup for using mental ray Satellite with my two macs to allow the Mac Pro's copy of Maya to use the Dual G5 to help in rendering. This appears to give about a 10-12% performance boost.

My setup:

• Mac Pro (mirage) running Mac OS 10.5.6
• Dual G5 (helen) running Mac OS 10.4.6
• Connected by an ordinary ethernet cat 5 cable

On helen (the Dual G5 Mac):

1. Install the mental ray slave (see your Maya installation istructions; basically, insert the DVD, open the MentalRaySatellite/MacOSX/ directory, click the installer). Then, to make sure installation was correctly completed (I quote from readme_mr_sat.txt, in the same directory):
   
   

   To verify that Ray Sat server is running (Mac OS X - Advanced)
   --------------------------------------------------------------
   
   The mental ray satellite service on Mac OS X is run and managed by launchd.
   
   Apple includes a useful command-line tool for monitoring and managing launchd services: /bin/launchctl. Admin privileges are required to query or change the mental ray satellite service so you must authorize the command with sudo.
   
   In Terminal, type:
   
   sudo launchctl list
   
   to list all available launchd services available on your Mac. (This does not include services or agents running at a user/non-Admin level.) If mental ray satellite is properly installed it will show up in the list with the job-label "com.autodesk.mentalraysat2008".
   
   If the label is present then the mental ray satellite launchd service is properly installed. If it is running it will have created a log file at "/tmp/mi-raysat2008.log" -- connection attempts will be logged to this file.
   
   The launchd service can be loaded, unloaded, started, or stopped using the launchctl utility.
   

   
   
   
2. In System Preferences > Network > Built-in Ethernet
   • Configure IPv4: Manually
   • IP Address: 10.0.1.10
   • Subnet Mask: 255.255.255.0
3. In System Preferences > Sharing > Services, Personal File Sharing is on.
4. In System Preferences > Sharing > Firewall is off. (Alternately, you can set up a port in the firewall to allow the rendering: In System Preferences > Sharing > Firewall, click New. Under Port Name, select Other, in TCP Port Number(s) enter 7107, and in Description enter something like "mental ray satellite". Click OK. Then the firewall can be on or off and as long as the new port's box is checked, you should be able to render.)

On mirage (the Mac Pro):

1. Maya 2008 must be installed, of course.
2. With Maya 2008 installed, create a text file and name it maya.rayhosts. In the text file, type this line:
   
   10.0.1.10:7107
   

   The "10.0.1.10" is the IP address set in System Preferences > Network > Built-in Ethernet (see above).

   The "7107" is the port mr for Maya looks for on the slave machine(s) (again I quote the readme file):

   
   

   Slave machine port setup
   ------------------------
   
   Port number 7107 is set by default. To change the port number used by mental ray satellite, you must edit the services file.
   

   
   
   
3. Put the file in /Users/[my account]/Library/Preferences/Autodesk/maya/2008/prefs/
4. In Safari, type this as the URL to connect via ethernet to the slave machine (assuming its IP address is 10.0.1.10): 
   
   afp://10.0.1.10
   

   When prompted, enter your user name and password for your account on the slave machine.

5. When you render from Maya using mental ray, you should be able to see the related rendering activity in the Activity Monitor app on the slave machine.