Render Farm Deployment

First of all, what you need to know is that with only one license of Golaem Crowd you can render on an unlimited number computers.

Making the Crowd Render plugin Available on all render nodes

Although you can install the complete crowd package, it is recommended to install the Crowd Render package on your network (or deploy it on every render nodes).

Setting Environment Variables

To be able to render correctly, several environment variables need to be set on each render nodes. 

There are several way to set them (sorted from the most recommended to the least recommended)

• Through the configuration file of your render dispatcher (Deadline, Royal Render...)
• In a network logon script
• Directly in the system of each render nodes ( Advanced System Pameters \ Environment Variables on Windows, depending on your distribution on Linux)
• In your Maya.env (although it seems it does not work for all environment variables)
   

Quick Setup

If you are setting the environment variables through a script or configuration file, and if this script or configuration file correctly interprets variables expansion (this is the case for dispatchers using a .bat configuration file, or network logon script), you can directly copy/paste the content of the Golaem Crowd Render launching script.

You can copy/paste the whole content, except the last line which is launching Maya.
​The script can be found in C:\Program Files\Golaem\GolaemCrowdRender-2.X-Maya201X-64bit\bin\glmCrowdForMaya.bat. 
 

Manual Setup

Some variables are related to the Crowd Render plugin and should be set whatever the renderer. The renderer specific variables need to be set only if you are going to use the corresponding renderer.