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Render Arnold .ass files on Deadline Cloud - Deadline Cloud

Render Arnold .ass files on Deadline Cloud

The arnold_standalone_render job bundle renders Arnold .ass (Arnold Scene Source) files using the kick command-line renderer that ships with MtoA (Arnold for Maya). Point it at a directory of .ass files with a naming pattern, and it renders each frame as a separate task distributed across workers. This sample is useful for batch rendering pre-exported Arnold scenes without a full Maya session.

The bundle includes a sample cornell.0001.ass file in the scene/ directory. You can also download additional learning scenes from the Autodesk Arnold learning scenes page, or export .ass files from Maya. To automate the export step, use the maya_arnold_ass_export_render bundle.

To run this bundle, you need:

  • A queue with the kick binary available through a queue environment. The bundle's CondaPackages parameter defaults to maya-mtoa, which provides kick. On service-managed fleets, the deadline-cloud conda channel provides this package. For a specific MtoA version, build a custom package with the maya-mtoa conda recipe.

  • A Linux fleet associated with the queue. The job template specifies attr.worker.os.family: linux as a host requirement.

Submit the bundle:

deadline bundle submit arnold_standalone_render/ \
    -p SceneDirectory=path-to-ass-files \
    -p FilePattern=robot.####.ass \
    -p Frames=1-100 \
    -p OutputDir=./output