growlrender-maya-mentalray: A C repository from peterhost

##MentalGrowler

DESCRIPTION : monitoring daemon for Maya and Mental Ray (MacOS)

AUTHOR : Pierre Lhoste

VERSION : 0.4 (March 28 2011)

LICENSE : BSD

##INSTALLATION :

###MacOS app

Download mentalgrowler.tar.bz2, extract the archive, move (drag and drop) mentalgrowler.app to your /Applications folder
Doublle click on the app. A tiny icon will appear in your menu bar ![](https://github.com/peterhost/growlrender-maya-mentalray/blob/master/macos_app/BUILD_simple/Resources/extra/icons/menuicon.png?raw=true "" =24x24)
```
 USAGE : 
 0.  this icon is where you launch the daemon. By default, it's not running
 1.  click it once to start the growlrender daemon
 2.  click it again to stop it.
 3.  ... and so forth
```
Each time, a menu pops out under the ![](https://github.com/peterhost/growlrender-maya-mentalray/blob/master/macos_app/BUILD_simple/Resources/extra/icons/menuicon.png?raw=true "" =16x16) icon, telling you which operation just occured (mentions in red).

If you wish to exit the daemon (which only takes up 6MB) choose "quit mentalgrowler" in the popup menu, when the status (red) text tells you the daemon is stopped
The daemon runs in the background, so there's nothing else for you to do. It will automatically detect when a Mental Ray batch render is launched
Choose Mental Ray as your rendering engine in Maya
set "Verbosity Level" in Mental Ray Rendering Options to "Detailed Messages"

render -> batch render -> Messages -> Verbosity Level

###Shell version :

If you prefer to run growlrender from the command line instead, follow these instructions :

either clone this repository or extract this archive someplace
copy the shell_version_ directory to someplace within your $PATH
launch growlrender from the command line growlrender --all. It will run in the background from now on, and automatically detect when a Mental Ray batch render is launched
choose Mental Ray as your rendering engine in Maya
set "Verbosity Level" in Mental Ray Rendering Options to "Detailed Messages"

render -> batch render -> Messages -> Verbosity Level

NB : the growlrender script is a simple bash script. so it should be able to run on any growl-able platform

##MORE :

See the help for runtime options ( growlrender -h)

GrowlRender for Maya and Mental Ray

description: monitor the rendering process of a Maya scene with Mental Ray via (detailed) growl notifications. This script is intended for use on macOS X Leopard, but should be easilly adapted to other growl-compliant OSes Growl must be running on your system otherwise growlrender will exit (and whinny in disagreement)

usage: growlrender {options} {logfile}

logfile :
path to your maya render logfile (if not provided, the default, /Users/you_user_name/Library/Logs/Maya/mayaRender.log is used)

options :

	   START/STOP DAEMON :
	    by default, calling growlrender will start/restart the daemon. If you
	   wish to stop it, use the --stop option

	   --stop      stops the last running growlrender daemon
	   --status    tells if growlrender is running
	   -q --quiet  growlrender doesn't print status messages to STDOUT.

	   GROWL NOTIFICATIONS :
	   --debug   turn on 'debug' notifications     (default off)
	   --warn    turn on 'warn' notifications      (default off)
	   --info    turn on 'info' notifications      (default off)
	   --error   turn on 'error' notifications     (default off)
	   --progr   turn on 'progress' notifications  (default off)

	   --all     turn on ALL notifications
	   --progranderr   turn on 'progress', 'error', 'warn'
	   --debug   also show uncaught notifications  (default is off)

	   --sticky  growl notifications are sticky    (default is off, except
	                                                for FATAL or SUCCESS which
	                                                are always sticky )

	   ALERTS:

	   if the growl daemon is stopped or crashes by itslef :
	    -gf --growl-check-freq            frenquency in seconds of checks for
	                                      the main GROWL service                 
	    -nk --no-keepalive                tells growlrender to exit whenever
	                                      the main growl daemon crashes,or is disabled.
	    -w --wall-notify-on-growl-crash       sends alert to 'wall'
	    -s --sound-notify-on-growl-crash      plays a sound alert 
	    -sw --all-notify-on-growl-crash       both of the preceding
                                              
	   OTHERS :
	   --growltimeout=xxx   set the number of nanoseconds between two consecutive
	                        growl notifications of one given type. Lower than 300000
	                        is hazardous
               
	   -? -h --help    print this message

NB :

1. only one instance of growlrender can be launched by user
2. The 'growl watching' sub-daemon only works on Macos for now

##TODO

debuging, better parsing of mayarender.log (especially network rendering)
remote host notifications
elapsed time notifications

peterhost/growlrender-maya-mentalray