We have a large render farm (QUBE!) running XSI 2011 on our worker machines, and a LARGE number of workstations also running XSI 2011.
Now, we have no problem submitting and batch-running render jobs created on our workstations. There is no problem with our Render Farm installation.

The problem we have is that if one of our students creates or edits their scene file on the student version of XSI, (eg at home) and then attempts to batch render it (on the render farm), the job fails, warning about “student version”.
Opening the scene on a workstation and re-saving it makes no difference. The scene file is still tagged as a “student” version. It’s like XSI thinks it’s “unclean” having been in contact with the student version..

How can we “disinfect” these scenefiles?

Any solutions gratefully accepted!

Try exporting everything out as a model, and then importing that into a new scene.

edit: The student version is not a commercial version, and so there are restrictions. You can’t use it for commercial purposes, and you can’t use it with xsibatch and a render farm.

We’re not commercial. We are an academic institution.
Hence we have a render farm for student work.
I’ll see if anyone has tried exporting as models. I seem to remember someone mentioned exporting as ascii?
Or maybe not.

Our students can work on our (academic license) XSI workstations, and submit jobs to the farm, but the more ambitious ones tend to take their work home and use their own student versions. They then bring them in, and try and submit to the farm. Thump. :(

q292u 29 March 2011 07:13 AM

We’re not commercial. We are an academic institution.
Hence we have a render farm for student work.
I’ll see if anyone has tried exporting as models. I seem to remember someone mentioned exporting as ascii?
Or maybe not.

Our students can work on our (academic license) XSI workstations, and submit jobs to the farm, but the more ambitious ones tend to take their work home and use their own student versions. They then bring them in, and try and submit to the farm. Thump. :(

Ok, for “commercial”, substitute “commercial or academic institution” in what I wrote before ;-)

Try exporting an .emdl from the Student version, and then importing that into your Academic Inst version.

If that fails, you could use dotXSI.

I’m glad to see we’re not the only school running into this issue.  We’ve got the same setup as you, q292u, but instead we use Royal Render.

StephenBlair 29 March 2011 10:14 AM

Try exporting an .emdl from the Student version, and then importing that into your Academic Inst version.

This method works great.  I might add, if you already had set up passes in the old scene, like I did, and don’t want to create the passes again.  My Instructor suggested this great plug-in to use for Softimage.  Here’s the link:  http://www.ethivierge.com/page/plug-ins/et_passmanager/

Has anyone contacted Autodesk and recieved an answer/solution yet?  I contacted them on Friday and am currently awaiting a response.

Render Junkie 03 April 2011 08:31 PM

I’m glad to see we’re not the only school running into this issue.  We’ve got the same setup as you, q292u, but instead we use Royal Render.

StephenBlair 29 March 2011 10:14 AM

Try exporting an .emdl from the Student version, and then importing that into your Academic Inst version.

This method works great.  I might add, if you already had set up passes in the old scene, like I did, and don’t want to create the passes again.  My Instructor suggested this great plug-in to use for Softimage.  Here’s the link:  http://www.ethivierge.com/page/plug-ins/et_passmanager/

Has anyone contacted Autodesk and recieved an answer/solution yet?  I contacted them on Friday and am currently awaiting a response.

I don’t see any new support requests in the queue.
If your support request is about the Student version restrictions, I’ve already answered that here. There is no way to use scenes produced by the Student version with batch rendering.

Stephen Blair
Softimage Support Team Lead
Autodesk

Hello everyone i’m new on this forum so i would like to know more about this Batch rendering
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