Using Backburner with Maya Render Layers

So if you have found your way here chances are you are trying to accomplish this illusive phenomena known as getting render layers to work in Back Burner with maya. If you just start a scene rendering with "send to backburner" in maya you will ONLY get the masterLayer

I spent a lot of time researching this and found a script someone wrote to submit multiple jobs, one per render layer to Backburner. IT IS PURE GENIUS.

I'm posting the script here because it is so amazing I don't want to see it disappearing from the web. But I will link to the great guy that created it as well and if you are the guy who created it and want me to take it down from here i'm glad too.

Here is his blog.
http://www.marianoantico.blogspot.com/

Here is the Python script

Creative crash link if you'd prefer to get it there.
http://www.creativecrash.com/maya/script/to-backburner

Just create a new shelf icon in maya and paste the code from this script into the command section for the shelf icon. No need to "install" it anywhere.

The only thing you will need to tweak is to open the script in notepad change and update the maya path on line 251 and 602 to reflect your version of maya. Search for 2011 and replace it with your version in my case 2015.

If you don't do this BB will throw a create Cmdjob Process error: 2 and not give you any other information as to why it isn't working. But it's this path that is the problem.

Otherwise the script is pretty self explanitory, it sends a BB job for each render layer and your good to go!

See his mini tutorial here.
https://vimeo.com/35570376

Thanks Mariano!!

ADDITIONAL TIP
You can also change the path your files are going to render to by adding this command to the "additional options" field on this script to each job before submitting.

If you don't ALL images even from different render layers will go into the same folder. Example.

-rd "//VFX_NAS/Maya_Project/images/Shot_1"

ANOTHER TIP
You can install backburner Monitor on multiple machines to be able to watch the jobs. but only one of them can control the jobs, add render nodes etc. To change which system controls the render que simple open Monitor on the system you want to control it from. Connect to the manager IP and hit ctrl-Q

Change default save from binary to ASCII (maya)

Simple tip but if you can't find where to change this can be frustrating.

Just go to file menu in the top of maya. Then click the little square next to "save scene as" Now in the popup you can select maya ASCII as the default save type.

Fix the h264 MOV video washed out, pale gamma playback issue on PC.

To fix that horrid washed out MOV playback problem on Windows in the Quicktime player. Go to Edit>Preferences> QuickTime Preferences you can disable Direct3D video acceleration. This fixed the low contrast problem I had with the h264 and foto jpeg codecs. I also prefer this solution over the “straight alpha” solution (which I was doing in the past) because the straight alpha method seems to make jittery, slow playback for MOV files.

Note it did seem like it maybe caused videos to open up a little slower before playing back, but it still beats the alpha straight method IMO.

Some other great information about the problem.
http://vitrolite.wordpress.com/2010/12/31/quicktime_gamma_bug/

Maya won't see network file paths (Maya 2015)

So for whatever reason to get maya to actually see network paths when you try to link a file that is on a NAS for example you have to change a setting in your maya preferences.

Go to the menu in the top of maya. Window>settings/prefernces>preferences

Then in the catagories section on the left side of the dialog. Choose Files/Project

Scroll down on the right side till you see "file dialog" section. And select "OS native" now you can browse in maya to network drives.