October’s Free Tutorial-- Speed Up Your Workflows with Efficient Rendering

Rendering in Maya can pose a challenge for even the most experienced user. In this month’s Free Tutorial, I’ll show you what a 'Command Shell' is and how to use it to simplify rendering, and make your work much, much more efficient. While the whole idea of command line rendering might seem a little “antiquated” or daunting, I promise you, this will be worth your time. Your workflows WILL speed up and you will find that your professional skills are better for the effort.

As all renderers are aware, scenes these days are increasing in size so being able to utilize RAM efficiently on your system is vital and using 'Command Shell' is a great way of achieving this. I often see artists resorting to automatically using Maya's Render Tool when they could actually be so much more efficient if they knew some of the alternatives available to them.

In this tutorial, I begin by looking at rendering in Maya. I will show how rendering is achieved, and then we will take a look at the 2 Command Shells options which are available to you through Windows 7. I will teach you how to control the environment variables by manually editing paths, and how to specify where the system needs to look for certain executable files - in this case the Bin folder in the Maya directory.

I complete the video tutorial by showing you how to access help and view lists of commands. Many of these commands can be utilized to not only navigate the Bin folder, but also your entire system. By the end of the video you will use the shells as part of your workflow, whether it's just looking at pictures or launching the render of one of your Maya scenes. And, you’ll be happy that you’ve spent the just over 15 minutes to learn this new technique. Trust me, this tutorial will make your workflow more robust and add an essential skill to your toolset.

Here’s the basic outline of what this tutorial covers:

• Editing paths and solving problems
• Using the Bin Folder in Maya
• Accessing and viewing a list of commands
• Using shells as part of your workflow

Here at Escape Studios, we will continue to work on new tutorials for each month. So if you have an idea or think that you might be able to share some of your expertise with our online community, just drop me a line.

How to Access the Free Tutorial

To access the free tutorial, you need to register on our website. Once you are registered, you can access the tutorial here.

If you have any questions of comments about our tutorials, please let us know. We’d love to hear your feedback.