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The Anatomy of a Job

The job is the collection of tasks which comprise a single rendered frame, which includes sub-passes and other outputs. Settings are defined globally by the job attributes, but can be overriden by other attributes when finer level of control is needed. 

In RenderMan For Maya, a job is defined as the series of Maya dag nodes that must be executed and evaluated in order to render a single frame. There are three levels of granularity: scene, pass, and object. RenderMan-specific scene settings are controlled by job attributes, settings that affect the scene globally. RenderMan-specific pass settings are controlled by display attributes. RenderMan-specific object settings are controlled via object level attributes.

Setting Job Attributes

Most of the time, job attributes will be set in the Render Globals. This is where all of the knobs and buttons exist for globally configuring settings for an entire Maya scene. 

For advanced control, however, the RenderMan for Maya initilization file, redermanformaya.ini, defines all of the default settings and behaviors for RenderMan for Maya. Users and studios who wish to create their own custom defaults, including custom menus, can do so.  

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