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labs: RenderQ. . .

renderq_dock

Remember all those render droplet apps I was always going on about? Forget about them. I haven’t told any of them yet, but their services are no longer required. Each app performed it’s job perfectly well, but I am all about teamwork here, and there is no “Q” in team. . .

Which has nothing to do with RenderQ, the latest update to the render droplet apps; which not only combines the functionality of MayaRender, AERender, NukeRender, and all of their Q counterparts, it does them all one better by using a little bit of intelligence. RenderQ is a drag and drop render queue app that will send Maya, After Effects, Nuke, C4D, and Shake renders to Terminal and queue them up for easy and efficient local rendering. It is now very easy to set preferences for the version of each app you are using, as well as enabling and disabling additional flags for each filetype. RenderQ will also automatically detect the filetype and submit the job accordingly.

Also included is RenderQ maitre d’ to pause and resume renders and will also show which render engine is currently active and the last job submitted to the queue.

Demo:

QuickTime Version 1280×800 (92MB)

iPhone Version

Support for more apps could very well be coming in the future. A $0-25 donation is customary. I prefer to keep this sort of thing on the honor system rather than setting up some sort of direct cost. If you use this tool at a facility I suppose a site license will cost you $0-$1000.


Download: RenderQ download page…

Enjoy! If there are any issues or concerns please contact: andoruLABS.support. One thing I didn’t mention in the demo is that there is also a simple app included to reset the RenderQ preferences. It is quite possible there could be a few little bugs or improvements that could be made so don’t be afraid to contact me. Also, this app is free but feel free to donate, as many hours of work were put into it.

[andoru.labs]

learn: Scale keys Manipulator in Maya. . .

The scale keys tool in Maya is a little awkward. Why doesn’t it just have a normal scale manipulator tool like every other app?

It does, it just isn’t turned on by default:

Open or download the QT version below if you want to see a higher resolution version of the video:

QuickTime Version 1152×720 (95MB)

iPhone Version

Feel free to let Autodesk know that this should be on by default.

labs: Render droplets and Qmaster workflow. . .

Here is a quick demo showing the workflow for using the different render droplets on my site. PLUS! A very thorough demo and explanation of using Apple’s Qmaster application that is part of Final Cut Studio for rendering with Maya, After Effects, and Nuke, and some detail on how it works and what it is doing.

A lot of the Qmaster info and initial motivation for the different render droplets comes from Hugo Guerra’s post on vfxtalk.com.

The vimeo version of the demo is kind of low resolution so check out the QuickTime below if you want to see more detail:

QuickTime Version 1152×720 (93MB)

iPhone Version

Again, if there are questions, definitely check out the Qmaster documentation or contact me at: andoruLABS.support

Here are links to the aerender docs, maya docs, and nuke user guide.

EDIT: A lovely commenter named David did some very thorough testing of the render droplet and Qmaster setup and posted his findings in the comments.

[andoru.labs]

look: Into the Cubes! . .

Some stills from a test I started on accident that could very well turn in to something interesting:

Rendered out at a very low sample rate (to avoid hilarious overnight renders) in RenderMan slapped together in Nuke:



Really just doing some tests for some IDs for a fake company, also have some new workflow tools coming up the pipe. . .

EDIT: Just had a Ahh Yes! moment with this one, you will definitely see something in the future involving this idea that should be quite interesting indeed!

labs: fn app…

fn

It’s great to be able to change your volume and brightness and whatever on the fly with your fn keys. It’s not so great when working in programs like Maya and After Effects, Nuke, or Shake where you really need those keys to act as normal fn keys, to change menu sets, and other things.

That is what “fn” is for. It simply Toggles “Use all F1, F2, etc. keys as standard function keys” in Keyboard preferences.

This is how it works:


fn1.1 in action

I like to keep it in my dock or finder toolbar so whenever I need to switch that preference I can do it quickly.


Download: fn download page. . .

Enjoy! If there are any issues, concerns, or requests please contact: andoruLABS.support. It is quite possible there could be a few little bugs or improvements that could be made so don’t be afraid to contact me. This app is free, no donations allowed on this one. . .

[andoru.labs]

andrew hake | reel | twitter-andrewhake
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