Backburner Command Line Control

Setting a registry value on all render servers—The following command line string will run regedit on all machines and add the registry key and string value specified in the bb.reg file (see below).

cmdjob -jobname "set bb registry" -manager managername -perserver regedit /s \\fileserver\pcsetup\bb.reg

The bb.reg file:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Discreet\backburner\3.0]
"CfgPath"="c:\\Program Files\Autodesk\Backburner\\Network\\nrapi.conf"

Getting registry values on all render servers and reporting it back to a central location—Runs regedit on all machines and saves the registry settings from Backburner keys to a file on \\fileserver\pcsetup.

cmdjob –jobname “get bb registry” –manager managername –perserver regedit /e \\fileserver\pcsetup\%computername%_bbregistry.reg “HKEY_Local_machine\software\discreet\backburner\3.0”

Batch Export of Obects in a Series of MAX Files—Running the following batch file export all objects out of a series of 3ds Max files on a file server.

The batch file:

rem begin batch file
dir \\fileserver\maxfiles\*.max /s /b >c:\fileslist.txt
c:
cd "\Program Files\Autodesk\3dsmax9"
cmdjob -jobname "batch export objects from max files" -manager managername -tasklist c:\fileslist.txt -taskname:1 "c:\Program Files\Autodesk\3dsmax9\3dsmax.exe"
%%tp1 -U MAXScript \\fileserver\scripts\export.ms
rem end batch file

The export.ms file:

rem begin batch file
dir \\fileserver\maxfiles\*.max /s /b >c:\fileslist.txt
c:
cd "\Program Files\Autodesk\3dsmax9"
cmdjob -jobname "batch export objects from max files" -manager managername -tasklist c:\fileslist.txt -taskname:1 "c:\Program Files\Autodesk\3dsmax9\3dsmax.exe"
%%tp1 -U MAXScript \\fileserver\scripts\export.ms
rem end batch file

The second line of the batch file (dir) writes out the list of files to fileslist.txt. (see image below) This text file is used as the tasklist. In the cmdjob line, the –taskname parameter has the value 1 which, means that each task will get its taskname from the first column of the taskfile. The %tp1 parameter specified after “3dsmax.exe” tells the cmdjob plugin to use task parameter 1 (column 1) from the tasklist as an argument to pass to 3dsmax.exe.

Controlling Adobe After Effects Rendering—The concept for controlling After Effects rendering is similar to creating a batch export of objects. To effectively control After Effects, you need to use a tasklist. For example, you want to render frames 0 to frame 250 of an After Effects file named aetest.aep. This file has one comp (Comp1). In your render farm, 10 servers are available to use for rendering. So the tasklist is defined in a tab-delimited file with three columns: The first column is used as the taskname –taskname 1; the second column used is referred to as %tp2; and the third column is %tp3. The last two parameters are passed as arguments for the start and end frame for aerender.exe

cmdjob –jobname “after effects test” –manager managername –taskfile c:\aejobs\tasklist.txt –taskname 1 c:\ae6.5\aerender.exe –project c:\aejobs\aetest.aep –comp “comp1” –s %tp2 –e %tp3

The tasklist.txt file:

Command-Line Rendering