Installing the RenderMan Artist Tools and RenderMan Pro Server on

WINDOWS

Introduction

This document describes how to install the RenderMan Artist Tools and RenderMan Pro Server on Windows, including installation of PhotoRealistic RenderMan and the License Server components.

Installation Process

The RenderMan Artist Tools for Windows are installed using the Microsoft Software Installer (MSI). Proper installation requires that the Windows Installer service be already loaded on your machine; if you are running Windows, you may need to ensure that this service has been installed (Windows 2000 and later should already have this installed by default).

Pixar's RenderMan software has been divided into four separate MSI files. These are:

• Pixar_RAT_version.msi - Main RAT installer which provides MTOR, Slim, it, and Alfred.
• PIXAR_RATdocs_version.msi - Documentation for all Pixar products.
• Pixar_License.msi - License server for Windows platforms. Only needs to be installed you are planning on running your license server from Windows as well.
• Pixar_RenderManProServer_version_Win32.intelP3.msi - The RenderMan Pro Server rendering toolkit, including Alfserver.

NOTE: for more advanced installations, you may instead run only the necessary installer. For example, if you know you are setting up a machine only as a remote PRMan server, you may only need to install RenderMan Pro Server, in which case you may run Pixar_RenderManProServer_version_Win32.intelP3.msi only. However, you must install RenderMan Pro Server on any machine that you will do any rendering on, including, for example, preview renders on an artist's workstation; installing RenderMan Pro Server is a separate step, independent of installing the RenderMan Artist Tools.

Destination Folder
During the installation process, you will first be given a chance to select a root directory. By default, this directory is C:\Program Files\Pixar\. This will become the root directory for all of the various components listed above.

Installation Profiles
The Installers will give you two choices of profiles, which makes it easier to decide which components are installed on each machine. These profiles are:

A) Artist Workstation: This profile is available when running Pixar_RAT_version.msi. This is the default and recommended install for a machine that will be used as an artist workstation which will be running Maya and MTOR.

B) Custom: The Custom profile allows you to choose individual components for installation.

Licensing
After choosing a profile, you will be required to supply information about licensing. Pixar's software will run only with a valid license. Licenses are obtained from Pixar, and are keyed to a special machine designated as your license server. Pixar's software must be told which machine has been designated as the license server; you will be prompted for the Server Location, and you should enter the name of this machine here.

If you change the license server after the install, you will need to change the license configuration manually - see: License Configuration.

If you have not installed a license server, and are currently running the installer on the machine which you intend to be the license server, you should click on "Install License Server locally" in order to cause the automatic installation of Pixar_License.msi.

Network Rendering Options
Alfserver is now bundled as part of RenderMan Pro Server.Ê The executable is now located in $RMANTREE/bin and is installed as part of the RenderMan Pro Server installers, rather than being installed separately in its own directory. Alfserver can still be configured to multiplex between several prman distributions. For more information see The Alfserver Manual.

Alfred Maitre-d
The maitre-d is an important component of the Alfred network job distribution system. It is the central authority for coordinating server use. It is only needed when Alfred is running on multiple network workstations. In this case, you should designate a machine on your network as the Alfred maitre-d, and specify the name of this machine where prompted for "Maitre-d Name".

If you are installing on the machine on which you intend to run the Alfred maitre-d, ensure that you have selected "Install Maitre-d Locally". You can choose any machine on the network, but the best selection is a machine that will experience little down time and reboots. After the installation you can reconfigure the maitre-d. For more information see the Alfred documentation about editing ".ini" files.

License Server (Pixar_License.msi)
If you have selected the "Install license server locally" option, or are installing Pixar_License.msi manually, you will need a valid license file. Licenses are obtained from Pixar, and are keyed to a special machine designated as your license server. In order to generate your license, Pixar will need that machine's unique FlexLM ID number. To generate the FlexLM ID, you must run a program called lmtools.exe, available as a part of the FlexLM Licensing Tools. You can download the FlexLM Licensing Tools from Pixar's software download area (which requires an encrypted url). 

Once you have lmtools installed, select the hostid button, and send the entire output from this box to RenderMan sales (rendermansales@pixar.com), who can then create your license.

This is what a dump from lmtools.exe might look like:

HOSTNAME=HAL 
USER=Dave 
DISPLAY=HAL 
INTERNET=2001.263.19.68 
0d4ys54s6ey 
DISK_SERIAL_NUM=7ku0b11 
FLEXID=7-4r53ick2

Once you have received a valid license file, you will be prompted to paste its contents during the installation of the license server. Please ensure that no spurious line feeds have been introduced by your mail client during this process.

Rebooting After installation you will be asked to reboot. This is necessary. During the installation process, services will be created, and registry and environment variable entries will be set up. The reboot is necessary for these services to properly come on line.

Environment Variables

The RenderMan Installation Wizard will add several environment variables during an install. These environment settings are required for the RenderMan Artist Tool applications to function correctly, specifying versions and locations of the various components of the toolset. You'll find that this simple mechanism allows you to quickly switch between versions of RAT and RenderMan. These variables will be set up automatically by the installer, but they're an important and crucial element of the installation process.

RAT Environment Variables
The RenderMan Installation Wizard will add or modify these environment variables:

RATTREE	establishes the location of your RAT distribution
RMANTREE	establishes the location of your prman distribution
RATDOCTREE	establishes the location of your RAT documentation
MAYA_PLUG_IN_PATH	tells Maya's plugin manager where to consider looking for plugins.
PATH	established the searchpath for the execution of programs. Both "%RATTREE%\bin" and "%RMANTREE%\bin" should be in your path.

Configuring "it" for Image Display 
You may also set an environment variable to enable the image tool 'it' as your framebuffer when displaying renders from MTOR.

RMANFB

set to it in order to use the image tool "it" as your framebuffer for image display

If you prefer not to set this environment variable, an alternate way of doing this is to edit the rendermn.ini configuration file, and change the setting of /displaytype/framebuffer to it.

Setting Environment Variables Manually
In certain cases you may need to enter these variables manually, if you've bypassed the RenderMan Installation Wizard, for instance, or if you want to edit variables to switch between software versions. The environment variables are easily edited through the System Properties control panel:

 

Important Notes

License Configuration
In order to run, Pixar software applications need to know which machine on the network has been designated as the license server. This is configured via the file %RMANTREE%\etc\rendermn.ini. By default, the installers for Pixar licensed software will prompt you for the name of the license server and automatically edit this file for you by changing the appropriate /licensefile entry, which looks something like this:

/licensefile 7498@licenseserver

If you subsequently change license servers, you will need to either reinstall the software, or manually edit rendermn.ini yourself and update the /licensefile entry.

Documentation
All of the documentation for the RenderMan Artist Tools is online in HTML format. This documentation can be viewed in any HTML browser such as Netscape Navigator or Microsoft Explorer. Open the main page: index.html

All of the RenderMan Artist Tool applications have the ability to invoke a browser to access application specific help files. If you have installed the documentation in a directory other than the default, you will need to make a change to the %RATTREE%\etc\RAT.ini file. See the section regarding "docURL" in this file for further details.

What if I need more help?

Check out the RenderMan Support Forum.

If that fails, try customer service:
Email: rmancusp@pixar.com
Phone: (800) 937-3179 (U.S. only); (510) 752-3028 (direct)