University of California at Berkeley
           Department of Electrical Engineering & Computer Sciences
                       Instructional Support Support


/share/b/pub/renderman.help
/share/b/pub/tractor.help

								   Nov 29 2017

CONTENTS
	Renderman
	Tractor
	Licensing


Renderman
---------

  Renderman from Pixar (http://renderman.pixar.com/) is software and an 
  application programming interface (API) for network distributed rendering 
  of three dimensional views.

  It is available for EECS classes on the MacOSX computers in 200 SDH
  (http://inst.eecs.berkeley.edu/~inst/iesglabs.html) along with Maya 
  (animation editor) Tractor (render farm).  See /share/b/pub/maya.help
  for more information.

Tractor
-------

  Tractor is from Pixar (http://renderman.pixar.com/) is software that
  manages distributed network computing such as for a render farm.  
  Tractor is running a Renderman farm on the MacOSX computers in 200 SDH.
  It is typically used by CS198-3 (UCBUGG) and CS194-8 (CNM190).

  UCBUG has documented the usage at
  http://ucbugg.com/static/index.html#labsrendering

  The IT support staff (inst@eecs.berkeley.edu) and some GSIs can restart
  the Tractor Renderman farm if needed.  The Tractor server ("engine")
  runs on york.cs.berkeley.edu, a desktop Mac in 200 SDH.  The clients
  ("blades") run on the other Macs and Linux workstations in 200 SDH.
  
  The command to start the Tractor engine on the York server is:
  sudo -s /bin/launchctl load /Library/LaunchDaemons/com.pixar.tractor-engine.plist 
  
  The command to stop the Tractor engine on the York server is:
  sudo -s /bin/launchctl unload /Library/LaunchDaemons/com.pixar.tractor-engine.plist

  The command to start the Tractor blade on a Mac client is:
  sudo -s /bin/launchctl load /Library/LaunchDaemons/com.pixar.tractor-blade.plist
  sudo -s /sbin/reboot		# reboot the computer

  The command to stop the Tractor blade on a Mac client is:
  sudo -s /bin/launchctl unload /Library/LaunchDaemons/com.pixar.tractor-blade.plist
   sudo -s /sbin/reboot		# reboot the computer

  
Licensing
---------

  Renderman licenses for the EECS department run on an Instructional server.
  Licenses have been obtained with the help of Profs O'Brien and Garcia.  
  
  The current licenses and products can be displayed by users with EECS 
  account at https://inst.eecs.berkeley.edu/~inst/renderman/.

 
 					Instructional Support Group
  					384/386 Cory, 333 Soda
  					inst@eecs.berkeley.edu